Unregistered
by jolibrix
Summary: Erra Kamiya and Mina Nakamura have joined Division 1 after the tragic loss of S. Kagari and Akane Tsunemori. Kougami and Ginoza are still reeling after such tragic losses and are trying to adjust to the new team members. But the new additions have their own pasts that may wind up rocking the team's already flimsy trust in the Sybil System. [S. Kougami X OC] [N. Ginoza X OC]
1. Chapter 1: Obsession Unfulfilled

Unregistered -Chapter 1

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this fic.

Erra Kamiya and Mina Nakamura have joined Division 1 after the tragic loss of S. Kagari and Akane Tsunemori. Kougami and Ginoza are still reeling after such tragic losses and are trying to adjust to the new team members. But the new additions have their own pasts that may wind up rocking the team's already flimsy trust in the Sybil System. [S. Kougami X OC] [N. Ginoza X OC]

 **CHAPTER ONE:** _ **Obsession Unfulfilled**_

 _ **Ginoza**_

Nobuchika Ginoza would never admit it, but at first, he had worried over bringing in a new inspector. In fact, when his new Division One partner had first entered his office, he had not even looked up from his paperwork. A part of him, the one that Nobuchika was loathe to admit existed, was afraid that when he raised his eyes, it would be Akane Tsunemori in front of the desk, or rather the ghost of her, ready to cast more doubt on his view of the world. The green-eyed man was self-aware enough to know he couldn't handle that with his hue already dangerously clouded. He had seen Inspector Tsunemori around him more than once since her death, and he was struggling to maintain, increasing his visits with his therapist to almost daily. If this new Inspector was anything like Akane, he feared it would push him over the edge.

Instead, he found not a short slip of a girl, but a tall, slender, yet full-hipped woman. This new inspector had strawberry red hair, which she mostly wore formed into a long braid that fell over her right shoulder. The natural coloring of her hair was something one didn't often come across in Japan. She was striking, and the first time they met, he felt a warmth at the back of his neck. It was rare for any woman to arouse his interests so immediately, so Ginoza quickly turned his attraction into annoyance, where he was most comfortable.

It was impossible not to notice all the differences between his former partner and the woman who introduced herself as Inspector Erra Kamiya. For one, there was little to no naivety in her eyes the way he had noted in Akane during their first meeting. Kamiya was older than the ghost that haunted his office, only two years younger than Ginoza himself. After reading her file, he wasn't surprised that she had had a whole other career before, as a therapist. The surety and confidence this new inspector's presence held was refreshing. He hadn't felt like she was a child with no idea what she was doing in the CID. It was clear from the start that she knew what she was working towards.

The differences piled up after their first case. It became apparent that Erra knew protocol and followed it. This was refreshing for him, and it made the phantom in his head fade more… slowly but surely. There was no way he could have handled another Tsunemori. Someone constantly pushing him by breaking protocol and defying him rudely at every turn…he had been worked over enough by his last partner and was glad that Inspector Kamiya seemed to value his advice and opinions. If she chose not to take them, she seemed to try first explaining herself calmly and away from listening ears of enforcers and other co-workers.

If there was one area where the women were similar, it was that very little seemed to nudge Kamiya's psycho-pass numbers any higher. She seemed to have accepted whatever her view of the world held and didn't appear to get ruffled easily—not yet, anyway.

Gino found that they worked well as partners, and more often than not, they were on the same page. After three cases, they were already needing less verbal planning. His naturally intuitive partner was excellent at reading people's non-verbal cues, and it was a skill she used to her advantage. Kamiya also wasn't putting up with any unorthodox detective work from the enforcers. She kept them in line just as well as he did, though he did find that she was friendlier with them than he thought was acceptable.

For their part, he had to admit those same enforcers were adapting to the new person, but he also noted that they still looked haunted. Akane, Makashima, and Kagari kept weighing in from the grave it seemed. Ginoza wasn't sure any of his team would ever shake those disturbingly confusing memories. The reduced trio of enforcers, Tomomi Masaoka, Yayoi Kunizuka, and Shinya Kougami struggled daily. His childhood best friend and ex-partner, Kougami, seemed especially lost.

Ginoza tried to tell himself that it wasn't his problem. Why should he care how his former friend was dealing with all the traumatic events? He knew it was better to keep himself separated emotionally from latent criminals like Kougami. Still, it didn't stop him from doing visual checks every now and then, looking for signs of Hound 3 falling completely apart. Kou's Crime Co-efficient rising to 300 or above was not an option, as far as Gino was concerned. He felt if he just kept a casual eye on him, maybe he could prevent losing him completely.

In fact, at that very moment, he caught his newest partner eying him with interest after one of those impromptu visual checks. He hoped she would just ignore the action and go on about her day, but he was becoming familiar enough with Kamiya to know it wasn't very likely. She raised an auburn eyebrow, and nodded toward her office. He followed while wondering if that spectacular teal color of her eyes was as real as her hair's shade.

Thoughts like that had been seeping into his thinking as well, and much too often. They came without permission. It was always worse when they were alone in close proximity like just then, in her closed office. Ginoza liked to place people in labeled boxes, making them easier for him to define. Hers was slowly shifting from one called "PARTNER" to one stamped "DESIRE." It was beginning to irritate him more and more, but he had yet to find a way around it. There was no way not to notice this woman in the tight pencil skirts she wore to HQ.

In fact, it was the talk of most of the CID divisions among the men and some of the women. Gino tried to be respectful and keep his own eyes anywhere else, but the slight sway of her hips had to be intentional at times. He thought she might be flirting with him, but then she seemed to have a flirty personality in general. Other detectives, analysts, and CID paper jockeys fawned and leered over their newest co-worker, and Ginoza found he didn't like that at all. He told himself that he wouldn't have liked such behavior even if he hadn't been so personally attracted to the woman.

But…she was different with him. He could at least admit that much. It seemed she lived to antagonize him more than the others. It seemed she would wait until she got a rise out of him.

"See something you like, Inspector?" her voice cut through his thoughts. He had been staring at her ass, which had already led him into imagining what it might look like sans skirt.

"I apologize. I was... What do you have on your mind, Inspector Kamiya?" Having no good excuse, Ginoza valiantly hoped that there wasn't a guilty blush on his cheeks. As always, he was annoyed at her ability to draw his thinking away from its secure professional mindset.

"You're worried about Enforcer Kougami. Why?"

Involuntarily, he narrowed his eyes. His immediate defense was always anger. "Inspector Kamiya. I don't know what you think..."

"Don't treat me like I'm an idiot, Ginoza." Those pretty orbs flashed with warning for only a moment.

She approached him, standing so close he could smell her hair. It almost distracted him from her snappy comment. Sass was something he'd come to learn she had in spades. Their brief verbal wars should have made him angry to no end, but more often than not, he found himself thinking of her more than ever after such an exchange.

Ginoza stopped the knee jerk reaction to flinch when a comforting hand found his arm. "I know you and the team went through something horrible before I was placed with Division One. I also know that the files on it are sealed, so it is something you cannot share with me. I just want to keep reminding you that I was placed with Division One because of my background in psychology. The chief and the Sybil System came to the conclusion that I can help you all continue recovering your psycho-pass."

Relaxing, out of habit, fingers went to straighten his glasses. Kamiya, ever observant, had caught him red-handed and figured out the seed of his issue. "You are correct to assume I was concerned about that trauma that's caused, Inspector." He hoped that the formal title would help his mind issue the distance from her he needed to regroup his thoughts.

"I can tell you care about your team. I see how you try to shoulder the burden of everyone in Division One, Ginoza," she stated, sitting on the edge of her desk, crossing her ankles. Kamiya gave a sad little smile to him and something in her eyes was worried…and perhaps a little impressed. It made him uneasy that she could see into him so clearly.

"Tch. I know not to get too close to our hunting dogs, Kamiya, if that's what you're afraid of," he scolded.

The pretty redhead rolled her eyes and hopped off the desk, approaching him again. "I think you should take Enforcer Kougami to interview that Mina Nakamura for the new position."

He grimaced at the suggestion to break protocol and tried to issue his argument. "That wouldn't be..."

"I won't go with you," she cut him off calmly. "You need to take him. Kougami was the one who helped choose her, and he will probably be best to screen her. I know you don't like how he profiles people, but it's a useful skill in this case." She was stern in countenance.

He found he wanted to scold her and comply with her demands, all at the same time. "Reading people's emotional stability is just as useful. That's part of the reason you were assigned to Division One. You are the one who is supposed to accompany me on..."

"Listen," she began, interrupting him again. "I understand that you don't want to get to close to your 'hounds,' but if you want to keep that one from going over the edge, you need to do this. He's dangling by a thread out there, Inspector. It will be therapeutic. If he just perceives that you trust him in the slightest, it will help your team work better—and it just might save your friend, Gino."

She tugged at his tie, a playful gesture, straightening a knot he was sure was already straight. He was having problems keeping his mind somewhere professional again.

"He's not my friend," Ginoza said quietly, trying to come off convincing but struggling to keep his voice steady. No one had been that familiar with him for ages. He still couldn't read if this was just a fun game for her to irritate him or if she was actually flirting. She pulled the tie from his suit jacket and smoothed her hand down the length of it before tucking it neatly back into his coat. The vibrant woman hadn't done it in a way that came across lewd, and yet, Ginoza felt a lump in his throat over how enticing it had been for him. Hoarsely he added, "—and don't call me, Gino."

She raised her eyebrow again, giving him a disapproving look this time. "Trust me on this. Group psychology is a specialty of mine," she finished, pulling her hand away.

"I thought you were strict about not getting closer to enforcers," he stated.

"No. I'm strict about maintaining our control—being good shepherds, and I don't agree that the best way to do that is to treat them as purely criminal. Not when it's to the detriment of our team or someone's mental health, Inspector," she finished curtly, effectively making him feel like a small child without even trying.

Ginoza frowned deeply and huffed his utter annoyance. It made him feel suddenly more like himself to be irritated with his partner. Indignantly, he turned to leave her office, saying, "You're the specialist. If this backfires, it's your ass on the line, not mine."

 _ **Kougami**_

He dreamed of Akane again, like he had almost every night since her death. Every night, they were too late in catching up to her, and every night, he was the first to find them. Makashima sporting several fatal wounds to his chest had already bled out, but Akane, tough to the last, hung on to life. One glance was all he needed to surmise that she was going to die. Makashima had eviscerated her. Shinya could smell it despite the way she had tried to use her coat to keep her insides in.

 _That should be me_ , he had thought desperately. This was supposed to be his death, finally avenging Sasayama and all others who had suffered because of Makashima. This moment was supposed to be an end to his all-consuming quest for vengeance. That quest had been his life for longer than he could remember, and when it ended, he was supposed to end too.

After convincing him not to go rogue, to stay with the team, the slight woman, dying in front of him, had stolen his gun and his death.

Bloody and beaten, her eyes loosing focus, she had reached her fisted hand out, and thinking that Tsunemori was seeking comfort in those last moments, he had held it.

Comfort was not her goal. No, she was handing him a recorded message that he listened to every morning. "Shinya Kougami, if you are hearing this, then I must be dead, and hopefully, Shogo Makashima is as well. I am sure you are angry with me. I did this because I want you to understand that I know now exactly how unjust SYBIL is. Trust your instinct, because it has been right all along. In this situation, killing Makashima is the best choice. Remember, that his blood is not on your hands. It's on mine. You are no criminal.  
I made this choice of my own free will..." _the message turned to static for about five seconds then_ , "Sybil...they have made me a tool, and this is my way of saying no. I can't beat the system, and maybe no one can." _A pause and a sniffle indicated that she was probably crying._  
"I can't ponder fighting the system, but you do and can. I don't know if anyone can make a real change, but if it is possible, I believe that you are the one to do it. Keep on questioning the world around you.  
Don't forget who and what you are. You aren't a hunting dog, a criminal, or a dead man walking. Kougami you've changed so much since the first time I met you. You are a human being who values living and life. You are a brilliant detective, a protector and savior to those who cannot do so for themselves. Kougami you are capable of helping so many people.  
I am unable to tell you the truth, but I charge you with seeking it, Shinya Kougami. Live and don't doubt the depth of your compassion."

The message made him realize that this had been her plan all along, and he felt stupid for not seeing it. She had changed him, and he saw it every day. Every day, it was a reminder that someone thought he was worth saving. With every grin, laugh, and joke, he remembered Akane. The brown eyed inspector had charged him with living and seeking answers, and with all his might, he was trying to honor that request.

It still haunted him that her message indicated that she knew the truth, and Shinya tried his hardest not to go over every single possibility as to why she was unable to share that truth with him.

He walked through the halls, attempting to expel that ghost, so he could function, so the guilt wouldn't eat him alive, because that was the exact opposite of why Akane had traded her life.

This morning was no different. He smoked, listened to the words that replaced his revenge, and prepared himself for another work day. Before his feet even entered the office, Gino approached him.

"Kougami, you will be accompanying me to screen our new recruit today. Be ready to go in ten minutes," he commanded, giving him a once over. He had caught his high school friend watching him, and checking over him. His former partner was worried and trying not to show it.

Kou was equally as worried, and tried his best to hide that fact out of respect for his Ginoza's wishes that they no longer be friends. Gino, first and foremost, needed to be well... needed to be happy. He wanted Ginoza to beat the odds against him and not fall into the same position Kougami occupied now.

Riding to the facility was quiet and awkward. Shinya hated the way rehab facilities smelled. The purified air, antiseptic, and the coldness of the walls made him anxious. He would've given anything for a smoke, but if he lit up here, Ginoza would probably have kittens. It didn't help that this was the second time in two days they had been to visit the facility. The first had left his boss fuming. Apparently, their newest recruit had been so drugged, talking was not an option. While Kougami knew he might be overstepping the lines, he had reacted anyway, letting the staff know that tomorrow she had better be able to converse. Kougami hated the way they drugged people in these shit holes.

As it was, Ginoza was showing a lot of faith letting him tag along to help recruit their newest enforcer. Typically, Inspector Kamiya would have been the ideal choice for this outing, but for whatever reason, his former partner had chosen to take him. He had a feeling that new partner of Gino's had more to do with this than he knew, but still, Shinya had been relieved. Kou tried not to let the sentiment go to his head.

The nurse at the front desk had blanched when they said the name of the person for interview. "Are you sure that's who you want to talk to?" he had asked, looking like he couldn't believe it. This was the same reaction they had last time, but from a different member of the staff.

"What kind of fools work here? Do we look like we would come here for the fun of it or to simply waste our time? Of course, we're sure! Bring her to the visitation room," came Ginoza's bossy response. When the guy just sat there with his mouth hanging open, the green eyed man lost his patience. "What are you waiting for? You have a job to do. If I must, I will find your superior and tell him what an incompetent employee he has. Go, get Nakamura!" Without a second glance, his former partner had turned around and walked toward the area with the interview space, sitting down calmly behind the partitioned glass.

Kougami, enjoying the dread that fell upon the nurse's face, smirked, and made a shooing gesture after the skittish man. It was always hilarious to watch Gino's commanding presence in situations like these. Still, he had to wonder what had made the nurse go white like that. It would be unfortunate to find out that his choice of new enforcer wasn't as fitting as he thought. It would probably shatter the flimsy trust Ginoza had been showing him, as well.

In the room, Ginoza was cleaning his glasses, looking stern as ever. Kougami realized that if the task had been left up to the inspector all on his lonesome, they would never recruit a new enforcer. He seriously had no clue how to approach people unless it was to tell them how moronic they were.

Instinctively, Kou reached for his cigarettes, but halted. Green eyes were staring him down, having caught the near mishap. All Kougami could do was shrug and sit in one of the two seats set out for them. Within seconds, a woman was sitting in front of them, flanked by two very large orderlies. One of them had a bruise on his cheek, and looked like he was itching to punch something.

"You can leave us. She can't get through the partition." The inspector ordered with disdain. The men looked like they thought differently.

Before leaving, the one with the bruise stated, "If you are looking for a conversation, you're talking to the wrong person. She hasn't said a word since telling us her name and that was months ago."

As Gino, succinctly as ever, explained why they were there and what would be expected of her, she didn't say a word, just looked at them shrewdly.

While the spiel was being given, Kou studied his choice of new enforcer, and wondered, yet again if he made the right choice. Mina Nakamura looked somewhat feral. With mussed chestnut hair and wild but hazy blue eyes that looked at everything suspiciously, she might as well have been a wild animal. The dark circles under those eyes made her look the part of latent criminal. Strangely, something in him liked that.

He noticed that she was curling her fingers over and over again, and then it dawned on him. They had just woken her up, even though the staff had been told to make sure she was fully cognizant. She was trying to get the feeling back after being heavily drugged. Kougami had only experienced it twice and hated it both times.

Without thinking about the gesture, his hand landed on Gino's shoulder. Speech halted, and Kou cut in. "They just woke you up." It was a statement, not a question.

Those blue eyes met his, looking surprised. He increased his scrutiny of her state, using the profiling he could from their brief encounter. It was obvious something terrible had been happening to her in this place.

"How long were you under, Nakamura?" Ginoza asked.

She didn't break eye contact with Kou, but shook her head, looking like she was about to cry. The woman's entire focus was on him and the experienced enforcer knew she was implying she had no idea how long. It made an anger bubble inside of Kougami, knowing this may well be his own fate someday soon.

Before speaking, he felt Gino gently remove Kou's hand from his shoulder. So caught up in her intense eye contact, the ex-detective had forgotten to remove it himself.

Ginoza sighed. This was unacceptable, even for him. He stated, "I'm going to go find out who is responsible for this. Finish telling her how it works. I'll be right back. Make sure she is awake enough to understand."

Instead of continuing where his boss left off, he said, "I assume they at least let you read our proposal." She nodded and he added, "Your test scores indicated that you would be a good fit for this job. I'm not going to beat around the bush and give you some deep spiel about how much of a difference you can make in this job. I chose you out of a list. Your score's were commendable and you seemed like a good fit for this Division. I think you should accept, Nakamura. At the very least, you wouldn't have to worry about being drugged."

She looked him up and down then with a heavy scrutiny, as though she could read something about his sincerity by physical appearance alone. It was evident that she didn't trust the words. Mina's eyes were looking for clues as to whether he was telling the truth. The search ended where they began, unwavering.

Kougami tried to remember something from her file that would work as leverage. Clearly, she wanted to be out. She just didn't know whether or not to trust them. There had been no real information before she was in the facility. All they had were test scores and some basic biometric data. He did recall her sending requests out for books. That was all he had to work with. He tried to recall some of the specific authors on her request forms.

"Listen, I have no reason to lie to you." He tried to convey that as sincerely as possible. "You could possibly die being an enforcer. To be fair, it looks like you would die in there too. I'll tell you whatever you want. Ask me anything."

Her lips opened, as though to respond, but closed again. For only a moment, she closed her eyes and shook her head, as though trying to clear it. When Nakamura locked eyes with him again, he was struck by how fierce she seemed now that her eyes were changing from the clouded blue haze of being drugged into a natural and brilliant crystal shade.

Undeterred he quoted, " _How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad-simply because the thinking facilities have grown dormant."_

The door behind him opened.

When Ginoza sat down, out of his peripheral vision, Kou saw him look between the two. "So, what's the decision?"

His mouth opened to answer, but surprisingly, Mina spoke first.

"Thank you." Her voice cracked. "For telling them to stop drugging me," she said, gaze going to Ginoza and then back to him again.

"You are welcome. Do you accept our proposal?" the inspector asked, cutting to the chase.

With a small movement, the wild looking brunette scooted the chair closer to him, mumbled something in a language he had never heard before, and made a fist with her left hand. She whispered "Kishio, help me."

"You got her to talk," the inspector mumbled from the side of his mouth with something akin to awe. "They said it's been seven months since she last spoke."

"Will I..." the intense eye contact stopped only long enough for her to look and curse to the side, like she was mad at herself for speaking. "Will I have access to a library?"

Kougami felt the grin split his face. Of all the things for her to ask...

"You will have access to reading material," his superior answered. Mina spared a glance at the green eyed man, but came immediately back to Shinya, waiting for his answer. Apparently, she was taking his honesty promise seriously. He nodded in affirmation.

"And will I be able to go outside?" The walls captured her attention. The look in those blue eyes made him think she wanted to blow the things apart.

"Under supervision, on cases." He answered, knowing that she would accept his response.

"Then, I accept." As the orderlies led her out of the room, she threw back over her shoulder, "Mr. Kougami, you could have convinced me without quoting Jules Verne."

"Any fan of Verne is going to have to call me 'Kou,'" he called through the glass.

As she was led through the door, he watched the little spitfire shoot one last rude gesture back into the room in his direction.

Kougami found himself shaking his head with a lopsided grin, completely amused at his fascinating new choice of partner.

 _ **To Be Continued..**_


	2. Chapter 2: Unaccustomed

**CHAPTER TWO:** _ **Unaccustomed**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this fic.

 _ **Mina**_

Mina felt more than overwhelmed by the CID. It was an entirely different culture, and the technology was proving to be more of a hurdle than ever imagined. Back home, there was nothing close to the stringent atmosphere that surrounded the MWPSB's main buildings and the modern city of Tokyo, in general. It didn't help that she could here whispers from enforcers as she walked the halls. Of course, the words were random and jumbled, but most often "strange," "awkward," and "too quiet" were what weeded through. They were all fitting, which made it even worse for her. Worse yet, she had no idea how she'd even been placed in this society.

She was more unlike these people than any of them knew. She was part of Japan that was secret, hidden in the mountains and forests, away from life under Sybil's great eye. The founders that had fled the system in the beginning, like her parents, had called their people Unregistereds. They weren't in any of Sybil's massive databanks and nothing was known of them in Tokyo. Even the members who traded with Sybilites on the black market never mentioned that the goods were for a whole unknown society. Mina had another set of values, a completely different mindset, a hodge-podged language spoken only amongst her people, and a whole other world that made her quite a misfit in the city. Her past didn't resemble the past of her new co-workers at all.

Growing up with her brother and her people in their nomadic lifestyle, she had never felt like the odd one. Her parents had been respected in the community. Her older brother, Kishio may have been a troublemaker to the extreme, but he was nothing, if not likable and charismatic. Mina had been confident, funny, and had known she was capable…once. Something had happened over the last five years that even she wasn't aware of. It was mostly a blank, with occasional blurred nightmares mixed into her subconscious. When she started realizing what was happening, she was already in Tokyo, stuck in Adashi Municipal Rehab Facility—confidence destroyed, memory lost, and feeling like a scattered and useless mess.

Nakamura was certain that if she could hear the other enforcers and inspectors whispering about her, it would only be a matter of time before the Division One team felt the same way. She was extremely cautious around these unfamiliar people, struggling to get a feel for their dynamic. Within a week of arrival, Tomomi Masaoka had nicknamed her 'Trouble' elbowing Shinya Kougami in the ribs and saying, "You know it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for."

Mina didn't want to admit it, because she was determined to hate any of these odd people living in the Sybil System, but she quite liked the old man. He was easy to talk to and seemed to hold to a more familiar set of values. The others called him "old school," but it put her at ease in a way nothing else had since landing herself inside this overwhelming city.

Inspector Kamiya seemed nice enough, but Mina was sure that was an act on the redhead's part. She seemed genuinely friendly with everyone and Nakamura felt no one could be that nice. It made her uncomfortable and she tried her best to distance herself, especially once discovering that Kamiya had a background in therapy. After the rehab, the very last type of person she wanted to be around was a shrink. Still, the woman was almost irritatingly persistent.

Mina couldn't get a good feel for exactly who Shinya Kougami was. He had been the one to pull her out of rehab. It was Kougami that had gone over her file and decided that, of all the other possibilities, she had the most ability to be an enforcer at the CID with Division One. Her confidence and background were such that she didn't understand why anyone would have thought she would make a good candidate for police work, and yet he did. He seemed rough around the edges and not especially inclined to follow the rules, which she liked, but something about him made her feel annoyed.

Yayoi Kunizuka didn't speak much to Mina, but that might have been because the angry little brunette had been nothing but rude to everyone other than Masaoka since arriving. If they hated her to begin with, then it wouldn't make their eventual rejection so upsetting…at least, that's how she felt.

If there was any person she was certain that she wouldn't be getting along with, it was Inspector Ginoza. The two couldn't have been more different. She had even caught him grimacing over her ineptitude with the simple office machinery, like the coffee machine or trying to push on the damned automatic doors.

She worried about the first time she would have to go out on a case, because there was no room for error and Inspector Ginoza would be critiquing her every move. Going back to rehab was not an option. She would have to get the job done and she would try her very best to follow orders—even if the idea made her slightly queasy.

 _ **Erra**_

Erra was having a bad day. It wasn't the worst day ever. It was just bad, and now she was in a mood, to say the least. It had started with her first ten steps in the door. One of the security officers came up to her looking frazzled.

"We can't find Inspector Ginoza, and Enforcer Kougami has vandalized a droid, again."

"Take me to him," she had replied calmly. That was news to her, that he had a history of that kind of thing. Either way, she was going to find out what possessed him to vandalize CID property. As it was, the man was on thin ice.

They found him, sitting on the floor, smoking a cigarette, holding the circuitry to a now defunct robot that lay dormant about ten feet away. Frankly, he looked like he didn't give a damn. It wasn't until the inspector stood right in front of him that he acknowledged her presence.

"They usually send Ginoza to collect me."

"Yeah, well, today it's me. You want to clue me in as to why you felt the need to dismantle part of droid (She read the number from its back panel.) 2H10012?" She was a bit miffed at his nonchalant attitude.

"I wanted to smoke. Right here."

"And..." she gestured for him to get on with it.

"And droid 2H10asshole told me that I couldn't, and then it tried to stop me. So, I took decisive action."

"You can go now," she said to the side, dismissing the guard. "Hound 3, you know you can't smoke here. It is clearly labeled."

He just stared straight ahead, looking like he was waiting for her to reign hell on him, which was her original plan, but a careful review of the beginning of their conversation shed new light on the situation.

He had been waiting on Ginoza. In fact, if Kamiya had to guess, he had pulled this stunt just to get her partner's attention. This was his way of acting out, and if she had to speculate, it would probably be safe to say that this behavior had become more frequent since the loss of her predecessor. Of course, he probably didn't even realize what he was doing. Whatever had happened to Division One before her assignment had been highly traumatic, for them all, but Kougami had seemed the most out of sorts.

She knew that she would have to be delicate in handling the situation. This was not the time to call him out on reaching out the only way he knew how for his friend. Ginoza could deny it all he wanted to, but there was friendship there. Both men legitimately cared for one another. One simple, very preliminary therapy session was all she had needed to see it.

Sighing, she sat next to him, saying nothing and waiting for him to finish his cigarette. When he was done she said, "C'mon, Ginoza will blow a gasket if we are late."

"Why aren't you punishing me?" His voice had an emotionless quality to it.

"You don't need to be punished. You need to get to work."

When she had made the decision to become an inspector, instead of a therapist, Kamiya hadn't expected to encounter a group so already disillusioned with the Sybil System. She couldn't have them falling apart before she got a chance to find her own answers that she had been seeking the last several years. The way these people carried on in spite of everything that had happened to them had quickly endeared them to the newest member of the team. She wanted to help them move past this, ignoring her own misgivings.

But far more important than the urge to genuinely help, was that it was absolutely necessary not to have them draw suspicion towards her. Erra was certain that she had been placed with this exact team for a reason, and she would do whatever it took to keep it holding together. Questioning their own faith in the system could be exactly the blessing she could use to her advantage, or it could get her thrown out of the job all together before she found her truth.

Each time she had to convince one of them not to lose their minds, she felt prepared, but it took something out of her that she couldn't put into words. Why shouldn't they be allowed to lose their minds for a while without being punished?

The next incident of the day had occurred while she was observing the team over her computer terminal. Erra had been watching Masaoka fiddle with an action figure that looked very out of place in his hands. The look on his face was grim and sad. He wasn't the only one who had an action figure on his desk. Actually, all of them had something akin to a toy either on the desk, taped to the computer monitor, or even, in Kougami's case, perched on top of an old handheld video game that he never seemed to play. Three days was all the time she needed to figure out the trinkets were, in a way, little shrines to the lost enforcer Mina Nakamura was replacing.

Her partner had seemed to be the only exception, but one day, while looking for a file he had sent her back to fetch, she had opened his center drawer to find not one, but two of the little figurines. Kamiya imagined that when the former Hound 4 had been declared missing, they had looked through his desk and silently stole the effigies. It was heartbreaking.

Erra had been drawn away from her observation by the sound of her partner's chair flying behind him and the man himself striding quickly across the room toward where their newest team member was sitting. Nakamura was holding one of those action figures, looking at it quizzically. Kamiya could only surmise that she had found it in the desk.

Ginoza startled the little brunette by trying to snatch it out of her hands, but her hands had clenched around it. "Let it go, Nakamura! You have no right to touch that."

"What do you mean, 'I have no right.'" Mina had smartly replied. Ginoza had been especially hard on her. Erra had been waiting for them to explode at each other.

"Hand it over, Hound 4."

"Why? Because you asked so nicely? Tch." Despite her words, the woman had been in the process of handing it over. Gino missed that fact, completely.

"I don't have to ask. If you continue to defy my commands you will wind up back in rehab, Nakamura. If you..."

Mina had turned white as a sheet dropping the toy on the desk. "I'm sorry. If you'll excuse me..." with that she had fled the room.

Ginoza was fuming, and Kamiya knew that he would just work himself up more if she didn't do anything. So, with all the professionalism she could muster she requested that he join her in his private office.

"Ginoza, she doesn't know that was Enforcer Kagari's." She stated bluntly, hoping that the fact that she wasn't skirting around the issue would bring him out of the anger pit he was digging.

"I..." he started. "How do you know?" The look on his face was sheepish, as though the fact that he had been caught caring about one of his team members, even if it was a former one, was embarrassing.

"I can put two and two together. I know that Shuusei Kagari was the enforcer that went missing, and I know from his files that he was young—and the type to enjoy comics and video games. It makes sense that his disappearance would make the team grieve."

"Tch, missing," he muttered the words under his breath, but she caught them nonetheless.

"Is he not considered missing anymore? It didn't say anything like that in his file."

"No... Yes, he is considered missing," he looked so miserable that Erra couldn't stop her hand from finding his and briefly squeezing. The startled look on his face made her smile.

"It's okay to care for them," she said softly.

"No, it isn't. We'll just end up like Kougami," he muttered, jerking his hand away.

She let out an enormous sigh and moved around to sit in the chair behind his desk. She ignored his look of irritation over her taking his seat and gestured to the chair for guests in the room. Still looking annoyed, he sat.

"Let me ask you something, Inspector," she began. "It seems to me that if anyone can put up walls and distance themselves from the people in this division, it's you. Would you say that is a fair assessment?"

He actually looked somewhat ashamed as he nodded, which Kamiya found surprising. "Would you say you put any effort into fostering a personal relationship with Enforcer Kagari?"

"No! Of course not," he said, acting as if she had accused him of committing some grievous crime.

"I don't doubt that, Inspector Ginoza. You made an effort to avoid caring for your people and yet you grieve this man's loss as if he were a good friend or even family."

"That's ridiculous! It's nothing more than a boss who let down—," his face fell as the redhead interrupted him with a simple gesture.

As he had been defending himself, Erra had slipped her hand into the drawer and now held up Kagari's two little figurines.

"You're angry that I'm touching these, aren't you? Angry that I even know they exist? You want to lay into me like you did with Nakamura, isn't that true?" she asked, carefully watching his expressions.

"I think it's time for you to leave my office, Inspector Kamiya," Ginoza said keeping his eyes hidden behind his lengthy black bangs.

"I agree." He seemed surprised that his request didn't offend her in some way. "You may not wish to discuss your emotions over this with me, despite that being the reason for my post in your division. I do hope you'll consider the fact that even though you tried to make certain you wouldn't form an attachment for your enforcers, you weren't able to keep the previous Division One from becoming your family."

Ginoza's face looked livid for a moment, standing to open the door for his partner himself. His face changed to startled again as Kamiya added, "You should also know that I consider that one of your greatest strengths as the leader of this force." The two of them stared at one another for several moments. Gino seemed to be holding his breath. When he finally gave a short nod, Erra turned and left his office, listening to the soft click of the door closing behind her.

She caught Masaoka's and Kunizuka's glances and acknowledged that things were fine, before sitting back in the rolling chair in front of her computer terminal.

Kamiya spent quite some time absent-mindedly toying with the simple thin ring on her index finger, twirling it around with her thumb, before she finally refocused and began to work again.

Shortly after, a notification appeared on all of their screens alerting them to the fact that they had a case to attend.


	3. Chapter 3 Lethal Eliminator

**CHAPTER T** **HREE** _ **Lethal Eliminator**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this fic.

 _ **Ginoza**_

Inspector Ginoza waited for the rest of Division One to gather around the dominator cart to finish the briefing. They needed to move quickly, and there was no room for error. Plus, this was going to be Nakamura's first time out, which made him nervous. She had a defiant streak that could be dangerous, on top of that, he had already threatened to send her to rehab once that day. There was a chance she might be frightened enough to try and run. For the millionth time since they rushed out of the CID, he wished that there was a less intense case to have her out on. As it was, he arranged for her weapon to be locked, just like they had done with Kunizuka on her first outing.

He looked over at Erra and felt a pang of jealousy at her calm demeanor. She seemed to have no qualms bringing along their newest hound. Composed though she was, her face was set in a grim expression, belying her anger at the nature of their target. In fact, he had yet to see her so angry. He couldn't blame her. This case was particularly heinous.

When everyone gathered, he brought up a hologram of the man they were going to look for. "We have to be quick, so everybody arm yourselves while I talk. This is Mori Sato." The face of a balding sallow cheeked man floated into view along with his age and vital statistics. His teeth ground with the next statement. "Four children have been abducted and are considered to be in serious danger." A quartet of chubby cheeked little boys appeared along with their data. "Kunizuka will stay behind. Kougami, you're with me, and Nakamura and Masaoka will provide assistance for Inspector Kamiya."

A map replaced the pictures, and Erra chimed in, "The cameras have followed him to this area, here in this shopping mall, and he is effectively trapped there, but it is a lot of ground to cover. Enforcer Kunizuka, as Inspector Ginoza said, you will stay with the equipment here and help navigate us through this shopping center. We need your eyes to help us know when we're facing blind spots.  
The rest of us, we go in as a team. This man is considered armed and very dangerous, and our first priority is getting the children away from him. As of now, we have no recent visual on the kids, so be careful and observant. They could already be gone."

Ginoza watched his partner swallow hard and take a deep breath before finishing commandingly, "No matter their fate, it's our job to ensure this trash will face Sybil's justice."

Gino felt a strange fluttering over her surging confidence. As they walked toward the double doors that would get them the closest to their target, he watched as Kou explained the dominator to Nakamura. Inspector Kamiya took the lead, motioning for Nakamura to follow. Masaoka tailed, eyes already scanning every possible corner.

Ginoza hadn't needed to motion his enforcer to follow. He felt a pang of nostalgia for the days they spent as partners, as he and Kou moved like a well-oiled machine, opening the doors and jogging into the mall. This was exactly the reason he generally didn't partner the man, but Kamiya had insisted that Nakamura go with her. Yayoi piped in through their feed, breaking his momentary distraction and checking that she could keep in contact with every member of the team.

The squeaks, clicks, and thuds of shoes echoed in the now empty shopping center, heralding their entrance. The flashing lights from the many billboards added to an atmosphere of desolation. If time were not an issue, he would have warned them to be quieter, but they had to move swiftly. With a series of hand motions, he communicated that they should stay close to the storefronts and under the large balconies. Sufficient cover was few and far between. They passed dozens of shops all empty and barred for the lock down. Hound 2's voice warned them that the target had moved down a narrow hallway about 12 feet to the left, but there were no operational cameras for her to follow him past that point.

They paused at the hallway, assessing the danger. It was a choke point, and if the kidnapper was smart he would use that to his advantage. He looked at Kamiya and nodded. There was no need to signal his intention, she could read him well enough by now. His partner motioned for Masaoka to take lead, as he did the same for Kougami. Sticking close to the wall, they filed in, each team taking a side. Ginoza felt his anxiety rise the further they moved, reacting instinctively when the lights above flickered out. He grabbed Kougami by the shoulder and roughly pushed him against the wall and into a crouch. The sound of bodies hitting the wall across from them indicated that the second team was doing the same. Before the call for retreat could be made, sounds echoed through the hallway... running feet, the feeble screams of children, and slamming doors.

Much to his dismay, there was no way to regroup, because his Shepherd Two's group was moving forward with haste. As his eyes adjusted to the weak emergency lighting that finally kicked in, both he and Kougami moved. It only took a moment to realize that the other team was following a trail of blood. The small scarlet spread seemed to make everything around it black and white. Pushing harder, they sprinted to catch up to the rest of Division One. Without realizing it, he took the lead. If they couldn't get to the kids in time...he couldn't go there. Not now, while they still had a chance.

The team came together, but didn't stop.

"Were you able to see anything?" he asked his partner as they ran.

She spoke over in hushed tones, "A man dragging a boy, but not much else. It was too dark." He could tell that seeing the boy was affecting her stress level by the way she bit her bottom lip. He didn't want to bring up the fact that she'd only mentioned seeing one child.

It wasn't long until they exploded into a huge warehouse space. Cautiously, all of them slowed to gain their bearings. Dimmer light made towers of 10 to 20 feet stacked boxes look like huge monoliths. The smell of cardboard, plastic wrap, and the copper of blood invaded his nostrils. A quick look above made it apparent why the kidnappers came this way. A metal staircase curved its way around the storage room, allowing access to all the levels of the mall.

"Shit!" Erra's curse echoed around them. When Gino turned he realized she was pointing at the wall. He had to step forward to see that it was the breaker for lights, with an ax in it.

He stared at it for a moment, not quite getting what made her so infuriated, and then it dawned on him. "There's more than one man. He couldn't have been here to destroy the breaker if he was in the hallway with us! Damn it!"

"We're going to have to split up to make sure they don't make it to the stairs. The mall's on lock down, but we need to find them before the kids get hurt," came Masaoka's suggestion. The old man's voice was less than a whisper.

"He's right," Gino conceded. He hated splitting up, but knew it was the best way. "Inspector, take your team to the left. Tight line search...no more than one stack of boxes between you. Hound 3 and I will search towards the bottom of the stairwell— try to cut them off. Don't get too far away from each other. Keep in contact."

The situation was more dangerous than expected and Ginoza watched briefly as his partner's team headed away, suddenly guilty with the knowledge about Nakamura he hadn't shared.

 _ **Erra**_

Erra, Masaoka, and Mina formed a line, and as directed kept no more than one pillar of boxes between them. She was itching to move faster... to run. If something happened to a single one of the children, she wouldn't be able to deal with the guilt. No child deserved to have something like that happen to him. Vehemently, she cursed the stars for not having more people. The space was too big for only Division One to search effectively. Her ears strained to hear the slightest out of place sound. Kamiya moved as smoothly as possible, dominator at the ready. Every time she turned a corner, Erra expected to see a dead child. This was the most stress she had ever felt on a case.

To her right, she heard a scuffle, and then Pops was speaking loudly and clearly. "Put the boy down!" She had never heard him sound that way before, so guttural and commanding. His tone of voice made it clear that he was not playing games. Kamiya moved as quickly as she dared. If the old man hadn't fired yet, it meant that the child was in the line of fire.

Luck was on her side. She had managed to position herself behind the kidnapper. From her viewpoint, all she could see was the bright blue of the boy's tennis shoes between the attacker's legs. At one point, the kid's ankles buckled, but then righted. He was still alive. Masaoka was across the way, a decent distance.

"I already told you, old man. Drop the piece, and I won't cut him to shreds," the disturbed Mori Sato demanded.

The little boy's whimper made her grit her teeth. _Disgusting bastard!_

"I won't do that. Just let the kid go." The old man sounded like he wanted to rip the guy's head off.

Erra slowly moved from her crouch and into Masaoka's view. The index finger of his left hand twitched slightly at the sight of her. Smartly, he was making sure the guy didn't discover her presence by keeping him focused on the dominator.

With a grace that at any other time would have been impossible, Kamiya's feet made next to no noise as she came closer to the cretin's back. Within a foot of her destination though, all hell broke loose.

Masaoka crumpled, and it wasn't until he fell that she saw that the other attacker was behind him, brandishing a baseball bat. The old man was holding the back of his head, groaning. Another scream told her that second attacker was dragging one of the children along. She flinched as he lifted the bat for another hit to her Enforcer's head. She managed, "Masao..." and the old man got it. Sluggishly, he moved out of the way as the bat came down. Then the massive stack of boxes between the two parties started groaning and leaning. She heard a feminine grunt and the stack did it again. The grunt turned into a full out battle cry, and the boxes fell. As the monstrous pile of cardboard formed, Erra used the distraction to its full advantage.

At the sound of her voice, her target had turned. She closed the space quickly, and efficiently pulled the arm holding the kid back by its elbow, in attempt to wrap her other arm around the monster's neck. He turned out of it, to face her. The child was screaming as the man used his free arm to grasp at him again. The arm she had control of was brandishing a large knife. The fist that came at her wasn't practiced, and with ease was dodged. Her other hand was activating the dominator. The weapon was useless until the little boy was out of the way, but her perp didn't know that. She caught enough of a glimpse of the kid to see that his clothes were cut open, and the outrage she felt couldn't be quantified.

"You son of a bitch!" Erra quickly slid her hand down from his elbow to his wrist and with a circular motion, stripped him of the blade. The dominator indicated that, for the first time, she would be using lethal eliminator mode. He broke free of her hold on his wrist and tried to grab at her throat, but with a quick motion, she threw her forehead against his nose. A satisfying crack let her know his nose was broken. The bastard grunted and whined, much to her delight. Unfortunately, he still kept hold of the child.

Just when Erra thought she was going to have to beat the pervert into submission, Mina quickly but clumsily made her way through the cardboard pile, snuck up, and snatched the kid, moving as far out of the way as possible. Without thought, Kamiya fired, and was immediately covered with blood, guts, and other pieces of Sato.

In the distance, she saw Pops come to his feet, but then fall back to his knees. He had been hit pretty hard. His arm was motioning behind him, and Erra quickly realized the second attacker was getting away.

"Mina! Go." She pointed. "That way. The other guy has a hostage, one of the kids."

When Mina looked at her like she was crazy, she yelled, "Go!" Hound 4 was on her feet, making sure to set the boy down carefully, and moved rapidly out of sight.

She used all her willpower not to vomit as she scraped the remnants of assailant off of her arm to get to the communicator. Moving toward the child she reported, "Target Mori Sato has been eliminated. Nakamura is trailing second perp. Masaoka probably has a massive concussion. If you guys could join us, it would be fantastic." Inwardly, the redhead decided to lay into her partner for not describing exactly what 'lethal eliminator' mode was.

"Repeat, did you say you've encountered two..." Gino asked. He sounded out of breath.

"Yes, neutralized one threat. Nakamura's after the other, headed back toward the stairwell, I think."

"Fuck, that means there are three..." she heard faintly in the background from Kougami.

"I'm after a third. Can you follow Hound 4?" Her partner sounded stressed.

"Negative. I have a victim and Masaoka to look after. She can handle it, Inspector Ginoza!" Of all the times to doubt Nakamura...

"As soon as you get them stabilized, follow Hound 4, Kamiya! That's an order!" At that, communication was cut. That was a direct order, and she wasn't going to take it lightly, but the victim came first. Being covered in human detritus was probably not the best way to approach the child, but he would need immediate attention, and she wasn't just going to let him sit there. So, after a few more swipes to rid herself of the gunk as much as possible, she called in the medical personnel and crouched to the boy's level. A quick glance showed that the old man was still breathing and attempting to get up.

She used every technique she knew to try to calm the boy, and was thankful when Masaoka finally made it over and handed her his jacket to cover the child up.

The inspector's focus fell on Masaoka long enough to say, stunned, "You didn't tell me it had a blood piñata setting." Pointedly, she gestured to the people remnants all over her person.

The chuckle he gave was full and hearty. "I figured your partner had covered that." He smiled and winced, grabbing at the back of his head. "You know, there are two of you right now. Even covered in slime, you're both terribly stunning." Even with a concussion, he was cheeky.

"Tch. Hush, old man," she smiled. Changing the subject she asked, "Did you tell Nakamura to knock over those boxes?"

"Ha, not exactly— I told her to create a distraction. She knew that using the dominator would do no good because it would hit one of us… luckily."

With both adults working to put him at ease, the kid calmed down enough to ask Pops about his metal hand. It came as no surprise that Masaoka was absolutely great with kids, and soon he was talking to the boy about everything from trains to jets.

The kid's name was Rei and his chubby little hand never left Erra's. It was so small, and something about that fact made her want to cry. He should have never had to go through this.

A beep issued from her wrist, and soon, Gino was speaking. "Inspector Kamiya, do you have Nakamura?" She really didn't get his worry. It couldn't have been more than four minutes since their last communication, and she was about to tell him as much, with sass, but he was yelling again. "Her dominator is locked!"

Kamiya didn't even hear the second part before she was nimbly navigating through the cardboard maze. "Shit, Ginoza! You couldn't have told me that before now?"

 _ **Mina**_

Mina was hiding, like Ginoza had told her—waiting like Kougami had ordered. It was nerve-wracking to just sit there, listening to the creep tell the kid to sit, tell the kid to shut up, and one time, she heard the distinct sound of a slap. It just made the poor child cry harder.

It made her angry that they told her to wait for backup. No one else seemed to get that kind of treatment, and Mina could only assume that they thought she couldn't handle the situation. As it was, if it became critical, acting would be the only option, forget punishment. She couldn't afford to err, but the cries from the captive boy were pitiful and hard to withstand. She wasn't made of stern enough stuff to listen to those cries.

Hands and feet twitching, needing to move, the woman peeked around the corner. The guy looked entirely unstable as he paced the floor. Every ten seconds or so he stopped and touched the kid, muttering something to himself.

If he just stays like this I can wait it out. I can do this. Mina told herself these things, but still had trouble keeping still.

" _I don't know if you can, little sister. You've never been able to watch as someone is being hurt."_ Kishio, her smart ass of a brother's voice rang true. Using the communicator crossed her mind, but was immediately shot down. They would just tell her to wait.

Another glance around the massive stack of boxes made her blanch. The man was on top of the boy, giggling, and stifling the kid's screams with one hand while the other tore at his clothes.

Nakamura saw red as her chest constricted. The giggling made her want to shove her fist through the guy's teeth. There was no way she could just stand by and watch. So, stepping from behind her cover, the little brunette drew her dominator and adopted the stance that Kougami had taught her in training.

"Get off of him! Right now, or I will shoot you."

The man looked at her. Then he looked at her dominator, and Mina was tired of waiting, so she applied pressure to the trigger. "You are an invalid user. Trigger will remain locked," SYBIL's voice echoed in her head. She tried again, and received no results.

The target seemed to realize that something was wrong. "I guess that thing is nothing but a toy. I should've known better," he said, and then he giggled again. Large hands grabbed at the boy again, this time managing to rip his shirt. "What's little ol' you gonna do about it?" The guy spared her a glance and then went back to what he had been doing.

Nakamura was smart enough to realize that there was something terribly wrong with the man's sanity, and she had to stop him. So, after careful consideration of her options, she chucked the dominator as hard as possible at the giggling bastard's head. It connected and made him pause his actions. She had been hoping to knock him out, but it didn't.

 _Well, I guess I'm losing my touch._ As it was, Mina saw the opportunity to attack.

With a shout she barreled toward the man, intent on getting him away from the little boy. The crash into man's body had them rolling well and far away from the poor kid, but now she had to worry about the knife still in the abductor's hand. Mina landed on the bottom, and he tried to use his superior strength and force the weapon into her eye. Using both hands to hold him back, she waited until he seemed to be pushing all his weight toward her and pulled him forward, leading him away. Her shoulder was nicked, but he was thrown off enough that she could use her hips to roll their positions. In the process, a fist collided with her face, knocking her off. She was up in less than a second though.

" _Never underestimate a live blade,"_ her brother's advice rang through her aching head.

He slashed at her chest, an inaccurate movement that indicated how little he knew about the weapon he was wielding. Mina dodged his first two attempts to cut her, and then on the third she saw her opportunity and disarmed the man. Now, it was time to take vengeance.

 _ **Kougami**_

Kou finished helping the kids onto stretchers, wishing that he could use lethal eliminator mode on the fucker all over again. One of the kids was on the brink of death and had been horribly abused. When he had knelt to assess the child's wounds, his teeth had clenched so hard he thought one of them would crack. For once, SYBIL had administered correct justice.

The guy had been huge, and unnaturally fast. Three flights of stairs was how long it took them to catch up, and the bastard had been carrying two kids. Shinya had paused at the landing, assessing the situation, but Ginoza...usually the cautious one, had actually been the one to sprint forward and kick the guy right in the spine. The kids flew forward and rolled, and the enforcer had seen his chance.

It took both of them to subdue the guy, and not without their own set of bruises and scrapes. Ginoza was acting like it was nothing, but Kou knew there was no way his wrist wasn't at least sprained. It wasn't even that the bastard had been trained. He had just been really big and really crazy...maybe even a little high on something.

Kougami rose from his crouch, noting the pain in his left foot, and reasoning that he had injured it, again. It always seemed to be his left one that got hurt. Approaching Gino, who was looking at his communicator, he noted that his superior seemed more than harried. "How's the other team doing?" He asked.

"We need to get to Hound 4. Her dominator is locked."

Kou didn't even give the inspector time to explain where Nakamura was. He had overheard the message from Kamiya, and had a pretty good idea of where to search. He was taking the stairs two and three at a time, until the pain in his foot dictated less impact.

This was unacceptable. His mind, as it so often did nowadays, fragmented with worry. What if he discovered her cut open and bleeding, the way he had found Akane? Would she blame him for convincing her to join Division One? Would this finally be what brought his crime coefficient over the line? How would Gino handle having, yet again, someone else on his team die? There was no way to avoid thoughts of Kagari. He severely missed that kid, and he mused, Ginoza probably did, too. He knew that not even his faithful-to-Sybil inspector believed that the boy had just run away.

He looked down and realized that he could see Mina, the kid, the criminal, and a flash of red hair told him that Erra would reach them before he would. He kept moving, as fast as possible on his now throbbing foot, whilst watching the scene below.

He saw that she tried to use the dominator, and he also saw that instead of just dropping the weapon she chucked it at the bastard's head. Kou was sure he would laugh about that later.

Mina was holding her own against the assailant. The more distance he closed between himself and the action, he realized that she was fending off a knife. That wasn't what caught his attention though. What did was the way she was moving and deflecting the blade. It looked familiar, like Silat. The more he watched, the more he was sure that was the style of fighting she was using. It made him think of Sasayama. The pain of it was still heavy in his chest, even after all this time. He was almost down the last staircase when he saw her gain control of the weapon, and throw the man to the concrete. Nakamura didn't stop there, though. The little brunette brandished the blade in such a way that he was sure she was about kill the guy.

This was not good, and he drew his dominator, hoping that he was in range, dismayed to find that he wasn't.

But Erra was, and soon Mina was slouched over the pedophile. Apparently, even though she was about to kill the asshole, her crime co-efficient didn't warrant lethal eliminator mode, and for that he was grateful. Now they had to worry about the creep who was attempting to get up and use Hound 4's body as a shield.

Inspector Kamiya was unable to do anything with Mina blocking the dominator, and as he edged closer he heard her mutter a litany of curses. She moved slowly forward and to the right, and he realized that the redhead was moving to get to the victim. At least they could get the boy to safety. Kou limped his way to circle around, determined to make sure the crazed bastard didn't get away.

Erra who was now standing in front of the kid protectively, and looking completely worse for wear covered in blood and guts, had noticed his arrival and was engaging the kidnapper in conversation. Shinya took the opportunity, and rushed behind the guy, immobilizing his knife arm and putting him in a choke hold. He heard Hound 4's body fall, and soon the guy was slumping. He moved back and gladly fired his dominator, destroying the last of the criminals.

Assured that the threat was neutralized, he went to check Mina's wounds. Before kneeling, he looked at Erra and thanked her. She nodded in acceptance of his gratitude.

He couldn't stop himself from asking, "What the hell do you have all over you?"

The pretty redhead threw up her hands in exasperation. "I don't even want to talk about it, Kougami. I'm saving that conversation for Inspector Ginoza."


	4. Chapter 4: Blood Piñata

**CHAPTER** **FOUR:** _ **Blood Piñata**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this fic.

 _ **Ginoza**_

At first glance, Ginoza had been sure that the bloody gunk on Erra would be what was left of Mina Nakamura, and he filled with guilt. It wasn't that he knew the girl well or held an attachment for the new Hound 4, but she was a part of Division One and he knew it would be his own fault if she'd been neutralized, latent criminal or not. Kougami would be a wreck, and that wasn't something Nobuchika wanted to see. Erra would be upset, and he felt that he would deserve the scolding. If she had been responsible for killing a member of their own team, her psycho-pass would certainly be clouded, and he wasn't sure he could forgive himself for that.

He hadn't imagined when locking the dominator that Nakamura's crime co-efficient would shoot up past 300, however, so he tried not to jump to the worst conclusion. Scanning the area, he saw Hound 4 being cared for by one of the medical team's personnel. He was a tall, blonde nurse... Seki, he thought was his name. Clearly the girl would be fine, despite having apparently been paralyzed.

He didn't even have time to finish his thought, because the partner he was so worried about came up to him and wiped guts all over his shirt and neck. "What the hell, Kamiya?" he shouted as he jumped back in disgust.

"What the hell? What. The. Hell? Let's see," she held up the bottom of her shirt, which was drenched in blood, and a chunk of what might have been brain matter dropped to the floor. " _This_ is people goo, Inspector Ginoza."

"Um. Yes..." he didn't know what to do. He felt stunned watching her ire rise, anger radiating from her every pore. She was moving into his space, and he could smell that yes, it was human guts covering her form.

"Do you want to know what I thought right after I found myself drenched in this…this... mess?"

Ginoza knew that he looked like he was about to tuck tail and run. She was frightening when she was mad. A hand encrusted with red flaking blood shot out and grabbed his ear, bringing the man down to her eye level. He flinched at the pinching, and he noted a particularly fatty looking piece in her braid.

"I thought, 'How nice of my partner to warn me that the dominator has a _human blood piñata setting_!'" Those teal eyes were impossibly close and soon her nose was touching his. "You have to ride in the car with me all the way back to the CID, Ginoza, and I plan on making sure you get the full experience of what it is like to be trapped with this smell. The windows will be up, and you will keep your mouth shut."

She let him stand up straight, and all he could think was that he would do whatever the hell she wanted as long as she stopped shouting at him and making him feel like a petulant child. He would do anything to make this better. "I'm sorry."

"'Sorry' doesn't cut it. You owe me for this. You owe me _big_." She suddenly turned away from him. "Kougami, I would stop laughing if I were you, or I'll make you ride in the car with me, too. You could've warned me just as well as Inspector Ginoza."

Kou's face fell and Kamiya turned back to Ginoza, speaking so that only he could hear. Teeth gritted, looking beyond furious, she muttered, "And if you _think_ I don't have more to say about the bullshit you pulled out there today…" She didn't bother to finish and scrunched her nose as she frowned at him. At a normal volume, his partner added, "I'll see you in the car."

Kougami was very obviously straining to keep his face neutral, and as soon as she stomped off, presumably to ask the blonde nurse caring for Mina for an update on her condition, Kou laughed so hard his eyes started watering.

"Hound 3, this isn't funny." It wasn't at all as far as Nobuchika was concerned, but something about seeing Kou laugh like that made him smirk. When was the last time the enforcer had guffawed like that? He couldn't recall.

"Oh, but it is," he stopped because he had to catch his breath. "I mean... she... she called it a damn blood piñata, and you...Gino, you are screwed. You know that, right? You should have seen your face."

"Shut up, Kou," he deadpanned and walked after his partner, who was headed toward the car. The ride home was going to be tense.

Once he made sure that the paddy wagon was off with his enforcers that didn't need to be carried out by stretcher, he made his way to the vehicle. Taking a deep breath he entered the car, and true to her word, she had been sitting there with the windows up. He had to admit, the smell was wretched.

"I'm going to talk, Inspector Ginoza, and _you_ are going to listen. Do we have an understanding?" He looked over and saw that she was glaring at him. Her voice was low and dangerous, daring him to contradict her.

"Yes," he said sheepishly. There was no doubt that he was about to get an earful.

"Never pull a stunt like that again. I understand that you don't trust Mina yet, and I also understand that in some twisted way, you thought you were doing the right thing." Her tone was cold and demanding. "I am your partner, so start acting like it. You _will_ keep me in the loop about decisions of that nature. I can only surmise that you don't trust me yet, either."

"No. No, that's not it. I just..." he tried to explain.

"So, you did it because you knew I would veto the idea. Is that it? Better to ask forgiveness than permission?"

Ginoza felt a lump form in his throat, because he deserved every bit of her rage, and yes, he hadn't told her because she would have told him not to lock the dominator. It pained him to have her truly angry at him for the first time. He had always had the unintentional gift of pissing people off and the fact that his most recent partner treated him with such patience felt like an accomplishment in some ways. That was gone now. She was furious, and rightfully so; he felt massive guilt over his actions. "I just needed to make sure she was ready, and..."

Erra cut him off again. "Never again, Ginoza. Mina could have died out there, and only because she was trying to do the right thing, and I almost..."

He didn't hear the rest of her sentence, because he saw a foothold for him in this argument. "So, you think her stabbing him was the right thing to do, because I was under the impression that you believed that Sybil was responsible for making those decisions." Immediately, he regretted his words. Gino understood that he was being argumentative to cover his shame, and he didn't even believe 100% in his justice system after everything he'd seen.

"Don't you dare! What I think is that an enforcer under our command was put in a position where her dominator didn't work, and she couldn't just stand by and watch while a creep hurt a little kid. That was on _you_ , Ginoza. She saw what she considered a major threat coming at her. We were actually lucky that somewhere, somehow, she has had martial arts training. No, I don't think that puts her in the wrong. Sometimes, we have to know when to act swiftly. What if I would have had to use lethal eliminator mode on her? Do you think that would have been fair to her—sending her out to be slaughtered? What about to me? How do you think _I_ would have handled killing my own enforcer for doing something I might have done?" She took a slow breath in and looked away from him, out the window, before saying, "I want you to agree that nothing like this will ever happen again, and that despite your personal feelings, you will treat Nakamura as a part of this team."

"It won't happen again, Inspector. I give you my word, and... I am sorry to have left you in the dark, for all it's worth."

"Tch!" she clicked loudly at his useless words. "And roll the damn windows down, for shit's sake!"

"But you said…" he began, already obeying her demand.

"I know what I said, but now I think I'm going to vomit." She did. Profusely...and who would blame her? Thankful that it was at least out the window, he pulled out his pocket square and she used it to clean her face. Ginoza rode the rest of the way back to the CID in silence, thinking of ways to make it up to his more than patient partner.

 _ **Mina**_

When Mina had woken up in the infirmary, she had assumed she was back in rehab and panicked. Panicked might have been too small a word for her reaction, because when the man in green scrubs walked in, the little brunette tackled him to the floor, demanding to know where she was.

She was lucky, because the handsome man she mauled, with the wavy, platinum blonde hair, had a sense of humor. Bright amber eyes looked up, as he smiled, saying, "Well, you recovered quickly, small fry. You are in the infirmary, for the record."

"The infirmary?" It took a second, but she remembered. She had been shot with the dominator. "I'm in the CID. Fuck. I am so sorry, sir."

"It's okay. You sure move pretty fast for someone just coming out of being shot in paralyzer mode." He made eye contact with her then. "How are you feeling?"

"I... confused," she said, honestly. The adrenaline rush had left her feeling addled. "And my shoulder hurts," she added. "Who are you again?"

"Doc..," he shook his head and continued, "I'm the head nurse here. My name is Tetsuo Seki, and as much as I can say I don't hate the position you have me in, I think I need to look you over. Unfortunately, I can't do that from the floor. Can I get up now?" The smile he flashed her was nothing short of adorable.

She only felt mildly embarrassed about forgetting that she was straddling him, holding down his shoulders. It was his attitude about it, she supposed, that made it seem less humiliating. "Sorry. I guess I'm still kind of out of it," she apologized as she moved off of him. An attempt to stand had her falling to the floor. The paralyzer mode was no joke.

"Let me help." He knelt and wrapped his arm around her waist, leading her to the bed.

Right as she was sitting, a doctor entered the room, didn't even introduce himself, and started talking about giving her something for her anxiety. She just shook her head, disliking the idea of taking medication. Rehab had scarred her, it seemed. He moved closer, instructing her to rotate her shoulder, and her focus fell on a series of syringes sticking out of his pocket. Two were colored, one green, one blue. She couldn't stop focusing on them, and when the man made a move to physically touch her, she had recoiled. "Ms. Nakamura, I need to finish my exam," he said, annoyed. Her breathing, despite her efforts to control it, sped up, and she had no clue as to why.

"Hey, doc. I got this. I think she's still addled from just waking up. Go ahead and get to your other patients." Out of the corner of her eye she saw the blonde clap the other man on the shoulder and give him a winning smile.

"Fine. Fill this out, and bring it to me to sign later," he said, and then left.

Seki regarded her for a moment as her breathing slowed. "He made you a bit nervous, didn't he? No bedside manner at all, that man. Is it okay that I finish the exam? Does me touching you bother you?"

"I think I'll be okay. Sorry, I don't know why I reacted like that." The nurse had managed to calm her completely. Why had she reacted that way to the doctor? Maybe she really was still anxious from waking up so suddenly.

"I'm going to have to move your gown to look at your shoulder. Okay?"

She nodded her assent and shivered as her skin was exposed. It always seemed that the CID was too cold. "So, I think I may have offended your Inspector Kamiya," he mentioned as he gently prodded at her stitches. His touch was gentle, hands warm.

"How did you do that?"

"I think I made an inappropriate comment about how she was covered in people goo. Do you mind telling her I apologize? I forget that my sense of humor is a bit…macabre."

Again she nodded agreement as he assisted her going through her range of motion exercises. She wondered at what he could have possibly said to Kamiya. But she was more interested in why the redhead was in such a state. "Why? Why was she covered in people... goo?"

"Lethal eliminator mode on the dominator basically makes people explode. She called it a blood piñata, but I prefer to call it people-fetti... you know, like confetti. I think blood piñata makes it seem like it doesn't have the chunky bits, but people-fetti gets the point right across. She was standing too close when she used hers, it seems."

"What? 'Blood piñata' is the perfect choice. The chunky bits are the treats inside!" A smile formed on her lips, and he laughed heartily in return, making brief eye contact.

"Wow," he said through his laughter. "Wow! That is _really_ disgusting. I kind of can't believe you said that."

Mina found the kind man's laugh contagious and she giggled back. Tetsuo pulled on the two thin, white sticks that were hanging out of his shirt pocket and Nakamura learned that they were lollipops. He offered her one and she declined.

"Suit yourself," he added. "I've become fairly addicted to them over the years. Yellows are my favorites." He chuckled at the strange look his patient was giving him as he pulled off the plastic and popped it into his mouth. "Okay. So, you need to come back for a checkup in a week. Make sure to ask for me, small fry, and..."

"Don't call me, small fry. I'm not small. You are just really, disturbingly tall," Mina cut him off. He probably came close to having a whole foot on her.

"Oh, now c'mon. Disturbingly?" She blushed at her rude word choice, but his grin assured her that it didn't bother him in the slightest. "Anyway, ask for me, that way you don't wind up with Dr. Grumps. Someone will come to discharge you shortly. It was nice to meet you, Ms. Mina Nakamura."

"It was a pleasure meeting you, as well, Mr. Seki," she said, and she meant it.

"Tetsuo, please," he added after grimacing at her use of 'Mr. Seki.' She grinned back and nodded.

Before he made it out the door he turned and pulled a book out of his scrub pocket. Giving her a quick smile around his candy, he said, "Oh. Mr. Kougami told me to give this to you. He says he'd like your opinion on it when you're done."

It was a copy of George Orwell's _1984_.

 _ **Kougami**_

Kougami fingered the seal on the little envelope Mina had left in the back of _One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest_. The little note she had left in the beginning bid him not to open this one until he was finished with the tome.

This had become a thing between the two of them.

It had started with him leaving her a copy of _1984_ during her recovery after the pedophile case. She had returned the book, and at first, he had missed the little piece of pink paper sticking out of the top. It wasn't until he was about to replace it back on the bookshelf that he found it, and discovered that Mina Nakamura was quite opinionated.

Her note had read,

 _Kou,  
I wish I could say I enjoyed reading this, but that would be a lie. I refrain from saying that I enjoy things that make me cry and throw things at my wall. With that being said, I want you to know that I am glad that I read it.  
Do you find a remarkable resemblance between SYBIL and Big Brother? Because I do. With synaptic scanners everywhere, we have our own version of the very same 'thought police' created by Mr. Orwell. Does the label of 'latent criminal' not imply that very same notion? I have committed no crime, but according to a computer, I have a potential to do so, therefore, I am locked away and treated as though I have already done something felonious. This logic is prevalent through society and the book.  
As I followed the characters' journey, I found myself rooting for their survival, and their victory. Of course, as you already know, that is not how the story ends. It makes me wonder how MY story will end.  
I will admit that I bawled my eyes out while reading of Winston's experiences in the Ministry of Love (how inaccurately named). Maybe there is always something that breaks us, but the romantic in me wishes that that were not the case. 2+2 must never equal 5.  
I suppose that this book frightened me.  
And now, I will stop this rant, for fear that you will never let me borrow another of your books._

Thank you, Kougami,

Mina

Her handwriting was absolutely the most atrocious he had ever seen, but he had responded by leaving a note in the next book he left out for her.

 _Mina,  
Your handwriting is awful, but your points are more than valid. More than ever, now, I find myself comparing Sybil, a computer that is meant to be impartial, to Orwell's Big Brother. I worry that there is relevance to the concept of psycho passes and crime coefficients. There are times when I worry that Sybil was correct in labeling me a latent, and does that mean that how SYBIL operates is correct?  
Of course, I have yet to actually commit a crime. I wish that I had faith like yours in my lack of criminal ability.  
I might argue, though, that at the very least, Sybil does take better care of its citizens. The people of Orwell's 1984 world are kept in a constant state of poverty and ignorance. They live in fear, are unhealthy, and the system works towards its own expansion. Sybil has yet to declare war, and according to theory, was designed to work towards the greater good. Supposedly, it is entirely impartial, working for the populace.  
But, in truth, I am not sure that I believe that. I am playing devil's advocate as a remembrance to a friend who at one point truly believed in Sybil's infallibility.  
What affected me was the absolute control of everything Orwell spelled out. The concept of history, even down to newspapers, being rewritten was overwhelmingly angering. If one could not gather information and trust its correctness, how could one independently learn? Of course, the novel succeeded in nudging me to question the world around me. Some argue that that is why my Psycho Pass is high. I need to learn to accept things, and then it will descend? But is that in affect making 2+2=5?  
Your reaction is certainly understandable.  
I digress, and you are welcome to borrow my books, even though, I have noticed that you have no problem taking them off of my desk. I will leave them there for you, and send others to your e-reader._

 _Kou_

One time, he had been flabbergasted when he received a book by Hemingway back within an hour. Attached was a post-it stating that she didn't like Hemingway, and that nothing he said or did would change her mind. When he asked why, the letter in return touted that Mina hated his writing style and found the man pompous.

So, they traded books, sometimes through e-reader, but preferably on real paper. Their letters were rife with ideas and questions, and at times he wondered why they never sat down and talked about them. Shinya could only figure that she was still a little skittish around him. There were days when they worked together wonderfully, and then there were days when she retracted into herself, refusing to even talk.

In those moments, when Mina would curl into herself and essentially, run away, he missed Akane and her open honesty. There was never a moment where she felt shame or denied any part of herself, even in the face of Saiga telling her things she probably had not even actualized about her psyche. Nakamura was different, which was refreshing and frustrating all at once. He would love to get her into a room with Saiga, if only to see if his former teacher had the same trouble that he was having with reading her.

As he opened the envelope, Shinya Kougami thought of Akane's message and wondered if this exchange between Mina and himself counted toward living the life the dead inspector had charged him with living.


	5. Chapter 5: How to Deal with Tension

**CHAPTER** **F** **IVE** _ **How to Deal With Tension**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this fic.

This chapter will contain a **lemon** , which means **sexual content**. If that kind of thing bothers you, or you are underage, please don't read it.

 _ **Ginoza**_ **  
**  
"I forgot to grab a towel," Erra called from inside the shower. "Can you bring one to me?"

She had barely finished that sentence when Ginoza stepped into his shower right behind his partner. "I'll have to get one after," he breathed against her neck.

Everything was warm and wet, and his hands slipped easily around to the flesh of her stomach, gently pushing her against his growing erection. She hummed softly and aided him by leaning into the shower tile in front of her, angling her hips and ass higher.

"That feels nice, Gino," Erra said to him as he littered her shoulders and neck with kisses, sweeping the long red hair over her shoulder and out of his way. He couldn't find words to respond. He only wanted to enjoy this moment before it was gone. Her hand came back and gripped at his hip, pulling him against her more.

"Please, Gino," she begged. She needed him. It was too good to be true.

The alarm interrupted the dream, eliciting curses and a shout to turn the damned thing off. Everything felt tight and coiled, almost to the point of pain. He was sweating and didn't have to look down to know he had an actual erection. This had not happened to him since being a teenager. It was embarrassing that he was so damned hard he could feel it throb in time with his rapid heartbeat.

He laid there a few more minutes, waiting for the torrent of hormones and sexual thoughts to diminish, but found that it just seemed to get worse. The dream had been realistic, down to the smell of her, that faint comforting scent of chamomile and vanilla. Moving the sheet down unintentionally rubbed the soft material of his underwear against his cock. Even that slight bit of friction made him grunt with the sensation. Frustrated movements removed his briefs leaving him nude yet still overheated.

He shouldn't do this. Erra Kamiya was brilliant, strong, confident…she held her own matched against any criminal, enforcer, or inspector. Erra Kamiya was his co-worker…and everything Ginoza wanted.

The image of his partner, wet and waiting, made Gino give up on restraint. There was no waiting this surrounded his length, thumb passing over the sensitive head, finding himself already slicked with pre-cum. He tried to conjure the image of her hands performing this activity, but instead started replaying through his dream.

Typically, this type of activity was a silent affair, something that evoked a few harsh breaths and maybe a groan at the end, nothing more. But this time was different, and maybe it was because he had such a detailed fantasy to fuel the movements of his hand. His quiet pants turned to groans, hips thrusting, pushing his member through his grip, imagining it was Kamiya's wet core.

He recalled the simplest things from the dream…the warmth as they crowded so closely together, the view of her hands curling against the tile of the shower. He could even remember the dark shade of pink those nails were painted.

The sound of wet flesh pounding together pulled a groan from his throat as he buried his face in his pillow. The sound echoing in his head of her whimpering out to him for more made his mind grow fuzzy. He rubbed himself faster, so saturated with pre-cum now that wet sounds were reaching his ears— pale comparison to the ones in his dream.

The way she moaned… he was the one moaning now, lewd and guttural sounds.

The feel of her breasts in his hand and on his tongue, and damn it, she had clutched at him, mouth hung open in an "oh" of ecstasy.

She had called his name. "Gi...Gino!"

And that was what did him in. The muscles of his stomach contracted, a heat flew from the base of his spine outward causing everything it touched to clench and then relax, over and over again as the warmth of his cum spattered his stomach, chest, and hand. Ginoza had not cum so hard in ages. He felt tears leave the corner of his eyes.

It felt so damned good, but now he was faced with the emptiness of his apartment.

He felt ashamed as he heard Dime whine from his kennel. Standing and jerking the bedding from the mattress, he balled it up and tossed it into the laundry. Stepping in the shower only added to that shame and he leaned his forehead against the tile, squeezing his eyes shut it frustration.

How was he supposed to face her at work after this? He had already begun formulating a plan to avoid her for the day…just for today. Ginoza would have to get these emotions under control but had no clue how to stop his subconscious from dreaming about her.

 _ **Mina**_

Mina liked the gym provided by the CID. At first, she had hated it. Her presence drew unwanted attention, but there was no way she was going out on another case without properly training beforehand. Soon, her presence and her weird workout routine was accepted and then ignored.

Today, she was circle walking. She found that Bagua was a good way to get her muscles and tendons stretched, and above all, it had a tendency to get her focused, which was something she definitely needed. As she moved through the second of the eight palm changes, she became aware of a figure coming toward her. Doing her best to ignore the person, she continued, pressing herself to the limit and holding every complicated section of movement until her limbs were shaking.

In her head, her brother admonished the little brunette, " _Your feet look like crap_." She winced at the memory and corrected her stance.

She supposed that another reason practicing her martial arts brought her such peace was that it was a way to remember her brother. With every move, she felt his presence and heard his voice. Nakamura wished more than ever that he was there with her, helping her understand the mess she had managed to get herself into. Loneliness and fright fueled her need for a familiar friendly face. She would have given a limb to even just have a fight with him again.

" _Don't bend your elbow little sister,"_ Kishio reminded her as she stretched her right arm out, feeling the burn in her back. " _Remember that the point of this isn't to be smooth, you little terror. It is supposed to look raw and rough because you are constantly pushing your limits."_ She could practically feel his hand push on hers, making sure her structure was correct.

With the change finished, she stepped out to continue walking her circle only to find herself looking right into the bare chest of Shinya Kougami. It was bothersome that she had not heard him come so close. It was also bothersome that her eyes were having trouble moving away from his muscle definition. Why did he have to stand there in nothing but loose cotton pants? It was ludicrous how well built he was.

"What are you doing?" He asked, sounding genuinely curious, eyeing her form. He actually bent down slightly and studied her feet.

A part of her didn't want to answer. It just wanted to stalk off and ignore the handsome man. Fighting the knee jerk reaction, realizing that he was just being friendly, she answered simply with "Bagua."

Those gray eyes narrowed for a moment. "I've never heard of that. Is it like Tai Chi?"

"I suppose. It does have elements of Tai Chi. I like how it focuses on internal power. I am by no means good at it, but it will be something I can keep with me for the rest of my life," she blushed, realizing that her plan to be taciturn was failing. He was making her nervous and chatty. He had that effect on her and she hated it. That was why she much preferred communicating with him through writing. So, closing her mouth, Mina moved out of her position and waited for him to move out of her way.

Instead of moving, he made that same uncanny eye contact that had sealed the deal for her in rehab.  
 _  
How the hell does he keep me locked in like that? You need to stay away from him. You know he's bad news, just like the others._ Her inner voice was quite stern, but it did no good.

"You wanna spar?" he asked, smirking.

So that was what this was all about. He was seeing how much merit she had, and planning on having a bit of fun at her expense. Men did this, she found, when they wanted to feel better about themselves. Time with her brother and his friends made her quite familiar with the phenomenon. The cocky half-smile was telling her that he assumed she wasn't going to be much of a challenge. Well, he had another thing coming.

"I'd love to. Let me finish warming up. You should do the same." Mina supplied him with her own smirk, and walked away to finish stretching.

She watched as he "warmed up" and realized quickly that he was showing off. This too, she had seen before. It was an intimidation tactic, and if she had been a lesser woman, it probably would have worked. Stretching her legs, she formed a strategy and watched. In a way, she had the upper hand because he had already underestimated her.

Finished, the little brunette padded over to watch him, keeping her stare as bland as possible, making sure he received no signal that she was impressed. More people walked into the room, but steered clear of their area. She wondered if it had something to do with the intimidating man.

Mina had heard plenty about him while eavesdropping. The women thought he was sexy, and so did some of the men. Both parties found him hard to approach, but a few times a person would bring up a time he actually turned out to be quite nice. Some that knew him when he was younger often talked about how personable he once was. They had also mentioned that he was brilliantly intelligent and great at what he did.

" _Who cares, Mina? You need to show him your grit. Teach him not to underestimate a Nakamura_." Her brother piped in.

With a final acrobatic kick, he straightened and rolled his shoulders. "You ready?" he asked, eyeing her, with what she could only assume was amusement.

"Yeah, as long as you are sure not to take it easy on me. That wouldn't be fair." If he turned out to be one of those guys, she was going to be sorely disappointed.

"Don't worry about that, Nakamura. I wouldn't dream of it."

They took to separate sides of the matted area and the woman moved to the center circle and side-eyed Kougami, feeling anger surface. Mina understood why he made her so irate. He was sexy, smart, capable, bold, and he didn't have to try at any of it. It seemed to Mina that he was the exact opposite of her, and it made her mad that she was attracted to him. She wanted nothing to do with that attraction, having firsthand knowledge of what men such as Kougami were like.

A yell heralded the beginning of their match.

As they circled each other, eyeing the other's footwork, Mina heard Kishio's voice once again. " _You are gonna have to make your move really quick. He is bigger than you. Make it count. Often, it's the colder, meaner person who wins a fight. You know you aren't cold enough. This isn't a dance class. This is real life. Be mean, little terror_."

Something he did made her think that he must have trained in Silat, at least a little. The more he moved, the more she was sure of it. __

_Fuck, Silat was my trump card. This has just become a hell of a lot more interesting.  
_  
His footwork was phenomenal, and every slight adjustment he made in response to hers was indicative of a lot of training.

 _Okay, so I'm going to have to surprise him._ With an explosive sprint, she launched herself at him, flying towards his sternum with her knee.

 _ **Kougami**_

Kougami had watched Mina for quite some time as she walked in a circle, contorting her body in odd ways. It had been annoying, not being able to pinpoint exactly what she was doing. It was odd, to say the least.

It was also annoying that he had not recognized the name of the art. It was something that he may have read about at one point, but he couldn't quite recall. Whatever it was, she seemed to be in the early stages of learning it. There was nothing smooth in the short woman's movements. Everything was shaky and rough.

What he was really curious about was the Silat. There was no way she hadn't at least dabbled in it, judging by how she had handled her foe in their most recent case. He wanted to see that in action.

It was hard to figure her out. Outside of their written letters which dealt only with the topic of whatever book they were discussing, she didn't talk much. He couldn't even get a good read on her frame. Her clothes were perpetually baggy to the point of ridiculousness. Even there, in the gym, she was wearing loose jogging pants and a shirt that would have been a little big on him. He remembered asking Gino at the rehab facility where her personal effects were and finding out she had none. The orderly that was waiting with them had said that she didn't even have her own clothes and holographic mods were not made available to people in rehab. The facility let her raid the lost and found bin. Maybe there had been nothing in her size.

Not able to get the clear picture he wanted, he had decided to spar with her. Then, at least, he could get a read on her fighting style. He was positive that he would win, because she didn't seem well trained, and he certainly had the advantage on size. Also, it was irking him that she had absolutely no fear at all about fighting against him. He felt she should at least be intimidated a little and the fact that she wasn't had him completely fascinated.

It would be the first time he had sparred with a real person in ages, and he was a little bit excited, even if it would end quickly. He had learned the Silat style of martial arts from his old enforcer Sasayama, and he had never had the chance to spar with anyone else that actually knew anything about his preferred method of fighting. He thought, if nothing else, this should be fun.

And then, she was flying at him, kneeing him in the sternum, growling, and knocking him off balance. When he hit the ground, she attempted to take to the side, kept her knee on his throat, trying to manipulate his arm into a joint lock.

Chest still hurting, before she could get positioned, he managed to get free. She rolled away from the try he made at getting into an advantageous position for grappling. They were on their feet again in no time.

From then on, Shinya was more careful. A test punch towards her was easily deflected. In fact, she moved into it managing to knock into his knuckles with a very precise elbow strike. It didn't hurt, but it let him know that she knew how to throw an elbow. A quick sidestep afforded her position to arm bar him, but he managed to turn out of it-just barely.

He threw a kick and almost got punched right in the groin. The move she used was not from Silat. So that other art did give her some new moves.

With a sense of accomplishment and fairly good hold on one of her arms, he finally connected with a knee to her side. She buckled a little, and instinctively tried to get out of the grasp he had. He pulled to keep her close, and she followed adding her own momentum to it. She head butted him in the mouth. His chin was going to be bruised, nothing more, but the action was shocking.  
 _  
Where the hell did she learn to do all this?_

He was getting riled up, and he didn't know why. Endorphins always ran high when he fought, but this was different and he couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was he was feeling. Typically, Kougami was able to keep calm, and it worked to his advantage. The only thing he knew to do was be angry at Akane for awakening something in him. All these emotional changes had happened because of her and the loss of his obsessive focus on ending Sasayama's murderer, and they were a hassle.

They continued their small tussles, testing, and waiting. Neither was willing to back down and Kou could tell by the look in her crystal eyes that she was as determined to win as he, no matter how tired they became.

Finally, he succeeded in getting his first good hold. It was proving to be hard to throw her. She was too well grounded and aware of his tricks, so he tried a different tactic. He gripped, the woman struggled, and in a show of strength and ability he threw her, not down into the ground like she was expecting, but pretty far into a matted corner. It was still a part of the matted area, so still fair game in his eyes. He was a little startled at how easily he had flung her small body and thought maybe they should quit, but Mina recovered remarkably quickly and came charging at him.

His arms were out to grab at her, and she made as if to move under them, but he was ready for that, and with a small adjustment his fingers made purchase on her shirt. The man wasn't about to ignore the opportunity and twisted the shirt into his palm, pulling her close, preparing to knock her off balance. Predictably, she pulled back, leaving Kou looking for a way to wrap the cloth around something to restrain her. This was how he was going to win.

The newest enforcer did something he would have never expected, at least not out of her in particular. Mina Nakamura had shown on many occasions that she was very uncomfortable with anyone seeing any of her body. So, it was shocking when she merely pulled out of the shirt, leaving her in nothing but a bra. Shinya couldn't help but stare for a moment, shirt in hand, looking at what she had been hiding.

He could hear people on the sidelines. They had attracted quite a crowd, and now some of the men were whistling. He thought he heard Inspector Kamiya's voice calling for them to shut up.

What Mina had been trying to hide was that she was busty... very busty. Quickly, he surveyed the attractive body before him. Besides her figure, she had tattoos. He knew there was a small compass tattooed on her inner left wrist, but apparently there were more. At least three were visible, and all caught his eye. On her shoulder, in black ink, was a series of numbers and letters. There was something small running along her right rib cage, but he couldn't see what. Another started at the left side of her navel and wrapped around and down to her hip and back. It looked intricate, but he didn't have time to make it out, because she sprinted forward and threw him, hard. Then, it was all a blur.

At some point, he split her lip, and at another, she hit him hard enough in the ribs to bruise. He had great grappling capabilities, but she was hard to hold onto, and reason that he found terribly annoying, he was distracted. A punch grazed her cheek and she lost her position. He made to grab for her, and her clothes proved to be an issue, again. The hold he had was on her pants, not her and they slipped down past her hips a bit. He was looking at the top of lacy red underwear. Distracted again, she turned and kicked him in the shoulder.

That was when things got rough. He wasn't holding back, and he wanted her pinned. Now.

 _ **Erra**_

Erra had made her way to the gym with the hope that Inspector Ginoza would be there as well. He usually was. She thought for a moment that she should promote the whole division working out once or twice a week as a team. They seemed to mostly be there together naturally, since they had the same downtime. It would be good for all of their hues if she could manage to get the whole team spending time together on their own. She hadn't really seen him much that day, but he rarely missed a work out.

Ginoza was admittedly the member of the team she was closest to given the nature of their jobs, and she enjoyed having him near. It was selfish, really, because it wasn't just that his company was comfortable, it was also that the tall, stern man with the jet black hair was someone she considered very good-looking.

If she were being honest with herself, so were many of the other men that made their way to workout at the same time as she did. The woman smiled at herself, remembering the flirty comment she had made to Enforcer Kougami just last week, because honestly, someone needed to say something to him. He was ridiculous the way he strutted about owning the place, and she was pretty sure he was aware of exactly how he affected people. The enforcer had not even blinked before retorting smoothly. That man was typically calm and cool waters. Exactly the type of playful banter she enjoyed.

It wasn't like flirting with Ginoza, who would blush quite a handsome shade of pink and get frustrated, calling her troublesome or just clicking his tongue. She had never enjoyed that response before. In fact, if she suspected it would make someone uncomfortable to be flirty, she would completely shy away from it. In her partner's case, however, she could sometimes feel the way his eyes followed her. The way he vehemently denied it was amusing. She couldn't seem to get enough of his annoyed reaction. He was overly nervous and uncomfortable admitting the truth that he watched her, but he had never actually gotten angry with her.

Often the two of them would stay late finishing paperwork, after which Ginoza would escort Kamiya to her car. He had let slip on more than one occasion that he enjoyed her company, although the therapist wasn't even sure if he was aware of it. Their conversations had let her in on the fact that he had a dog called Dime and that he enjoyed coin collecting, which she had no intention of letting him live down. It wasn't much personal information, but considering the man it had come from, it almost felt like some unearthed treasure. It was very nice for her to have developed a friend to talk to for the first time in years.

Today though, things had turned out differently. Instead of having the opportunity to spend time with the inspector and secretly appreciate the way his sweat-soaked cotton shirt clung to lithe muscles, she found herself to be part of an audience. There was a nice view of Masaoka fresh from his work out to her right, but her eyes were mainly trained on Nakamura and Kougami who appeared to be sparring quite intensely.

Suddenly, the woman pulled out of the grip Kougami had on her oversized shirt, leaving her in only a sports bra. The response from the peanut gallery was loud. As the little brunette was walking to the edge of the mats, Erra noticed the slight tremble in the woman's hands as men catcalled her. Some attempted flattery and some went for cruel, but both made the inspector see red. Clearly, it was affecting her enforcer. It took effort at times for Kamiya to remember that not everyone was as comfortable fielding such behavior. A couple of the men made very lewd comments and Masaoka flinched.

Before he had a chance to respond to the nasty words, Erra shouted firmly, "Keep it in your pants! Or you can come back to spar another time.

Most of them shut up immediately, but she noticed that one man in particular seemed to be shooting her a rather disgusting glare. Kamiya recognized he was a new enforcer on Division Three and stared him down until he turned away. Furrowing her brows for a moment at the back of his head, she turned back to the match.

The two on the mats were getting out of control, in her opinion. Punches seemed to be landing much harder than a sparring match called for. Masaoka nudged her shoulder with his mechanical one and gestured with his head to their teammates.

"What do you think, Inspector?" he asked.

"Looks a little rough, if you ask me. Shouldn't somebody stop them?"

"Nah! They're just getting out some aggression. It's good for them…especially Miss Trouble out there," he replied.

"You and your nicknames, Pops," she mused. The man seemed to give them to everyone, even occasionally calling Ginoza by his first name—a feat no one else seemed able to accomplish. Even she had been given a moniker.

"What about it, Sass?" he grinned, using the one she'd earned from him.

She smiled right back, but then looked back to the mats. "If it gets any rougher than this, I'm going to have to put a stop to it. I can't have them busting each other in the heads."

"I don't think we have to worry about Kou going that-," but his words stopped as, with a very loud growl, Kougami maneuvered himself out of his opponent's hold. With a show of shear power, he hefted the woman in the air and slammed her to the mats. He had leaned over her. Their noses were touching, and both sets of lips were pulled back into feral teeth clenching grimaces. The audience went quiet except for a few "oh shits" and a chorus of "damn."

Mina managed to slam an elbow to the side of Kougami's mouth and then press the heel of her palm to the underside of his nose. His hands struggled to keep hold of Nakamura's arms, and his body though bigger, was having trouble keeping her from damned near switching their positions. An elbow caught the side of the little brunette's eyebrow. Skin broke and blood flowed. It was a head wound, so the red was staining everywhere within a matter of seconds.

Erra yelled, "Stop!" but the two either ignored it, or were too engrossed in the struggle. Another yell yielded no response. The redhead stomped onto the mats with Masaoka following. "Help me pull them apart," she commanded everyone within earshot. Three men immediately went to pull Kougami off of the woman, but Pops held up his hand for them to stop and handled it himself. Two men were attempting to keep a very enraged Nakamura from lunging back at her opponent.

"Stop! Calm down!" The two still pulled against their restrainers. "That's enough!" she bellowed and it finally did the trick.

Nakamura and Kougami were taking heavy, shaky breaths as Erra ordered, "Both of you! To my office! Now!" Masaoka handed Mina a cloth to staunch the blood and wipe her face, then began escorting them. The inspector added to the audience, "The rest of you, you know the drill! Get to your workout or get to the showers."

Kamiya practically stormed to her office, shut the door, and sat in her chair. "Tell me right now why I shouldn't hand the two of you over to Inspector Ginoza and let him sort this out. I have a feeling we all know exactly how that would go, and I can't say I entirely disagree with it. This is something that needs to be addressed and it needs to be done now. Kougami, do you take issue with Ms. Nakamura?"

"Not particularly," he said putting a cigarette to his lips. How the hell had he managed to grab his cigarettes before being escorted out?

Erra grabbed it from his hands, and snapped, "Do not smoke in here!"

He sat back in his chair, and wiped his lip with the back of his hand, only sparing a glance at the thin line of red still found there. "I have no issue with Mina," he said, looking at the girl. Erra noted that a nasty bruise was forming on his chin.

"Are you second guessing your decision that she was the new enforcer we needed on Division One? Do we need to discuss other options? Is that what this is about?" The inspector felt a headache coming on. She wondered if Kougami had always been this difficult to reign in, because despite the fact that he was answering all of her questions, he was coming off as a smart ass.

"What? No! No. It's nothing like that. I just got a little too fired up. I—," he sighed.

"You what, Kougami?" She said a small prayer in her head, asking that his answer not warrant changing the team she was becoming so fond of, which included Nakamura.

Kamiya could see the muscles of his jaw twitching as the man grit his teeth. "I was kind of pissed that she was winning." The teeth baring grin he gave looked one part mean and two parts crazy.

Mina growled, glaring at her sparring partner. "Winning? You were clearly the one winning!" She rolled her eyes, and then said, "Why do you think I was so pissed? I hate losing to smug assholes like you! It feeds your ego, and that is the last thing you need."

"What the hell? You had me distracted. I couldn't get a good enough hold on your tiny legs. You and your bony arms were..." he retorted, clearly still feeling a little aggressive.

"Could you two quit arguing like my brother and I when we were kids?" Erra cut him off, realizing that their little match was just a matter of the two of them being too competitive.

"You called your brother a 'smug asshole?'" he said, much like a surly teenager.

"Don't try to be funny now, Kou. The tone, the vibe, it's the same. Either figure out how to deal with it and chill out or you will both be banned from sparring as a choice for working out." She looked back and forth between the two. Both were covered in bruises, little scratches, and were so sweaty, Kamiya feared she would have to have her chairs cleaned when they left. Her nose crinkled a little at the thought.

Erra eyed the towel Mina was pressing to the side of her head. "Do either of you need to go to the infirmary?"

A chorus of "no" and "absolutely not" met her ears.

She sighed. "Get out of my office, and don't let anything like that little display happen again." The redhead watched as they filed out, trying to discern if that was truly the end of it. Her anxiety over the issue ended quickly when Kougami reached over and wiped a little blood off of the side of Mina's mouth.

Mina feigned that she would punch him again, and he faked a flinch. "Smug asshole?" he questioned.

" _Tiny_ legs?" she returned.

They laughed and then began asking each other where they learned their skills, walking toward the gym together, presumably to collect their bags.

Inspector Kamiya left her office, hoping to catch up to Ginoza and fill him in on what happened before anyone else did. It seemed he was in a counseling session with his long-time therapist. By the time he was finished, she would be gone for the evening. She would just have to call him at home to fill him in.

 _ **Masaoka**_

When he'd first jerked Kougami out of the fight, Masaoka held tightly to the kid's shoulder, letting him pause only to grab his cigarettes. Mina trudged along, right beside the man she had been pummeling just minutes before, holding a towel to the boxer break along her eyebrow. Pops relaxed his grip when he saw the man look over and check on the girl.

They had definitely gone too far, and Pops was a little shocked at Kou's loss of control. The younger enforcer had changed quite a bit since the tragic death of Tsunemori. He was less focused, more unpredictable, unsure where he fit in without Makashima to consume his time. Aside from that, it seemed a shift was occurring.

Kougami seemed to be actively trying to find what kind of man he could be without obsession. He made more of an effort than ever before to have a personal life, and Masaoka could only hope it was for the man's betterment. The old man had to admit, it was good to see the kid smile and laugh more often.

It probably hadn't helped that the person attacking him had been Nakamura. Tension had been building between the two since her arrival, and it wasn't like the oil and water tension she shared with Ginoza. Mina, for her part, did seem to fancy the man who had pulled her out of rehab, but she didn't seem to like that fact. She was wary of him, and Tomomi could only assume it was because she had been hurt in the past, quite badly judging from the signs he could gather.

Still, he sometimes caught bits of their continuous written exchange. Once, he had asked Kougami what it was all about. He gave a vague answer about how it was nice to have someone who could keep up with him when it came to literature, but Pops could see there was more to it than that. It seemed nearly every time he saw Nakamura, it was a good bet that Kougami wouldn't be far behind, coming to be nosy over what she up to for the day.

Clearly, Kou was intrigued with her.

For that matter, it was becoming abundantly clear that Shinya wasn't the only one navigating a new attraction.

In the distance, Pops saw the redhead inspector storming to her office and mused how Nobuchika didn't know what kind of trouble he was in for. She was still beautiful in her fury despite the fact that she was a little frightening. Masaoka felt he couldn't blame Ginoza in the slightest for feeling such attraction, either. It was strange, but refreshing for him to see his son have such an uncontrolled response to someone in his life. The boy could distance himself/close himself off from anyone, but it seemed apparent to Masaoka that Gino was having difficulty managing that with his latest partner.

Here was a woman who actually pulled that part of his son to the surface. It was amusing for Pops to witness his son getting easily flustered by anyone. That feisty redhead was a hell of a beautiful woman, but she seemed to focus heavily on the job at hand. He worried that maybe Ginoza would find himself out of his league. Miss Sass was confident and bold, knew she was pretty and just went with it, and she was fiercely funny to boot. What she would have in common with Nobuchika, Pops wasn't sure, but maybe that didn't matter. He reminded himself not to push his son in that direction too soon for fear it might startle him away.

Masaoka allowed himself a brief moment to hope for his son's happiness. He also permitted himself a frivolous daydream about grandchildren, and for the first time in years, it didn't end with him in a somber mood. Long had the guilt over his latent criminal status convinced the old man that he had permanently ruined his son's ability to have a normal life. That, of course, included a loving relationship. Nobuchika had simply ignored that part of living, and Tomomi knew it was out of fear of losing control of his crime co-efficient...fear of becoming just like his father and abandoning whatever family Gino may have had.

Maybe things were changing for the better.

It was much too early for him to be so invested, but it was top on his list of desires. Inspector Kamiya might not be aware of it, but Pops had unintentionally placed a lot of his hopes and dreams on her shoulders. He could only hope that she would prove to be less stubborn than his son.


	6. Chapter 6: Unearthed

**CHAPTER** **SIX** __ _ **Unearthed**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this fic.

 _ **Ginoza**_

It had been a much longer drive than normal to reach the site of their latest case. Ginoza had side-eyed the redhead in the passenger seat and asked, again, "He was _losing_ to Nakamura?" He refused to believe it. He couldn't even form a picture in his head of the event that made sense. Kougami being so aggressive with an enforcer he picked for the team seemed extremely out of the ordinary. He was still partially waiting for Kamiya to give him some psychological explanation.

"No. What I said was that he _thought_ he was losing to her. I would call it more of a draw. Either way, the point was that I took care of it and they won't be going overboard again. I wanted you to hear it from me before the rumor mill reached you. I mentioned it last night when I called. Why are you still on this?" She rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed.

"It is just atypical of Kougami. Why are you so irritated? Aren't you the one that told me to be more concerned about him, Inspector Kamiya?" he asked, hoping to smooth over the aggravation he seemed to have caused.

"It's fine. I get where you are coming from. Just—let's focus on the case." She looked out the window and asked, "How much of a hike will it be to the site?"

The call they had received that morning had been unusual, to say the least. It had come from a survey crew preparing to install new Sybil scanners in a less urban area of Japan. "It is about five miles, according to the surveying company. It won't be a problem."

She sighed and seemed to huff away her impatience with it. After that, they spent the rest of the ride trading amiable conversation. He found he rather enjoyed the sporadic sunlight that filtered through the trees as they drove, playing on the color of her hair.

It wasn't until they started their trek that Ginoza realized why Kamiya had asked about the hike. She was more than physically capable, but clearly unhappy about their surroundings. The whole way to the site, the woman cursed at various branches, plants, and rocks, seemingly because they simply existed. Sweat made hair stick to her skin and she tried winding it into a bun out of the way, but it refused to play along. Kamiya resigned herself to puffing or spitting out the strands that insisted on getting in her mouth. He wouldn't tell her, for fear that she would direct her hatred for nature at him, but he was finding it quite endearing.

When they finally made it to the clearing, she composed herself and approached the foreman with him. As they followed the job foreman off the path towards the discovered remains, Ginoza noted that his partner seemed quieter than usual, distracted, almost on edge.

He also noted that it wasn't just her usual skirt and heels that forced his attention to her body, but apparently slacks and hiking boots as well. He groaned in irritation at himself, thankful it had been low enough that no one had heard.

Ginoza led Kamiya with a hand on the small of her back to speak with the two men who had found the remains. He hoped that he was not being too forward, but he knew that if the touch made her uncomfortable, she wasn't the type to keep quiet about it.

His mind shifted to what they were about to be investigating. As far as he was aware, no decayed human remains had been found like this in many years, not with the Sybil System monitoring everyone and the CID out taking care of any possible crimes that arose almost immediately. It was out of the ordinary, to say the least. Everything in Ginoza's life seemed determined to be out of the ordinary in the last year. He just needed to figure out how to deal with those changes while causing himself the least stress possible.

Now at the dig site, he only glanced at the hole in the ground, originally made to stabilize surveying equipment, now a grave. It would do no good to look until the droids were here, considering their superior ability to comb through every nook and cranny of a crime scene. He did find it ironic and amusing that those same droids were delayed in coming because they were unable to navigate the terrain his team had done with ease.

"I was digging the tripod's leg in and hit something hard. I thought it was just a rock. When I tried to dig it out, I noticed the teeth," the first man's voice trembled. He was a burly fellow with forearms larger than his biceps, but he looked as frightened as a small child. On top of that, it was humid and the poor guy was sweating profusely. His team would be in no better shape if they were out there much longer.

The other man was telling Kamiya about how he had to hike closer to the road to get signal and notify the authorities. The foreman lamented that he hated the jobs out in the wilderness and that the land was unusable for their purposes anyway.

His partner looked a little unsettled at that statement in particular, and briefly, he wondered why.

It was not until the first man was asking if they knew what happened to the person they had found that he turned and realized Nakamura was kneeling next to their crime scene and digging. He rushed over, and in a hushed whisper asked, "What the hell do you think you are doing, Hound 4?"

"Processing a crime scene, _Inspector_." She stopped, dropping the stick she had been using and said, "There are two people here, for the record."

"What?" How could she tell? There was so little uncovered.

"There are two, and one of them is a sub adult. Look. There are two mandibles. You can see right there, and the part that is sticking up on that one has deciduous teeth."

"I have no idea what you just said," commented Ginoza. He leaned down, curiosity piqued, anger waning. She was pointing to a knobby looking bone sticking out of the soil and another that was more obviously full of teeth. She watched his face to see if he was understanding her yet, waiting patiently for him to inspect. "You can tell that from just this much?"

"I can. I think I can start processing this before the robots make it up here. It might be a good idea, considering the storm that's coming."

The faint scent of chamomile and vanilla let him know that Inspector Kamiya was present behind him now. "What's going on?" she questioned.

"I think I can go ahead and start processing this. I was just telling Inspector Ginoza that it would be a good idea, considering the storm that's coming," Nakamura said, as she started to dig around the obvious outline of a skull. It was almost like the enforcer was tattling on him like a child, the way she said it.

"I think it is a good idea, Ginoza. They are having trouble getting the drones ready, and the weather is going to turn nasty soon," his partner said as she looked up. She seemed like she would be ready for the rain, however. The humidity appeared to be getting to Kamiya. She used the back of her hand to wipe the sweat that was beading on her brow. Finally, she glanced at him, waiting for his response.

He _wanted_ to say "no." They should wait and follow protocol, but as usual, Erra's words swayed his resolve. "Are you positive you can do this correctly, Nakamura?" He asked, and it came out snide, even if he didn't mean for it to. The redhead huffed behind him, and he winced remembering the scolding he'd received over not treating the newest enforcer like part of the team.

"Yes, I'm positive," she answered tiredly. "Did we bring up any equipment? I would like a trowel, and something to sharpen sticks with so we don't damage the bone. Oh and a tape measure and something to take pictures with, if we have it." She didn't wait for his answer before carefully removing dirt from around the bone again, using her fingers.

"Yes. I'll check with Kunizuka and Masaoka," he stated. As he walked down the hill a bit, his partner fell in beside him. She looked distracted. "Kamiya, are you okay?"

"Yeah." They walked in silence for a moment and then she said, "They don't usually send crews out this far."

"I suppose not. I guess they were looking to expand a bit," he responded, and noted that she was twirling the ring on her index finger. He'd observed that she often did this when something distracted her or irritated her.

"I think we should get a log of when, why, who, and where people are sent when they come this far out," her statement was simple, but seemed fervent, and the woman refused to look at him for some reason. "I think we should go back pretty far, considering the state of the remains. Years, even."

"That shouldn't be a problem." He paused at the equipment boxes and before turning to Yayoi, quietly asked, "Are you sure you are okay? Is there something wrong? This heat? Have I irritated you again?"

"I'm fine, Inspector. Stop fussing." She look flustered for a moment and then rushed out, "I'm going to ask Nakamura if there is any way I can help." Her boots kicked up grass with her departure.

Shaking his head, he approached Hound 1. "Did we bring anything like a trowel, and do you have that contraband pocket knife you always carry around?"

"We might. What for?" questioned the savvy hunting dog.

"Enforcer Nakamura is going to start processing the scene, and she said that's what she needs," he stated. Then he added, "Just hand over the pocket knife, old man." He whispered, "I'll give it back." He saw Yayoi smirk. Before Akane had entered the scene, this exchange never would have happened, but since her death, he found he made more exceptions than he used to…especially with his father.

Masaoka chuckled warmly, and withdrew the knife. Ginoza missed where it came from, again. He could never figure out exactly where the man hid the damned thing.

He went to deposit the contraband but faltered when he saw Erra leading Kougami to where Nakamura was pulling dirt back and to the side of the grave's outline. Kou immediately started moving dirt, nodding his head, and talking through his cigarette as Mina gave direction. He saw Erra make a grab for the tobacco, but she wasn't quick enough. The man pulled it out of his mouth and held it up and away from her. Gino couldn't make out what his old friend said to her, but Kamiya waved her hand in surrender.

As Kou placed the cigarette back between his lips, he could faintly hear her saying, "Just—whatever gets the job done, you two." The redhead walked off to the tree line, heel of her hand to the space above her eyes, looking far beyond _stressed_.

Ginoza finished handing the tools over to his latent detectives and asked a few questions, never taking his eyes off of his partner. Leaving Mina and Kou to tend to the dead, he made his way over to the other inspector.

"Inspector Kamiya, clearly something is bothering you. What can I do to help?"

She looked annoyed that he hadn't left well enough alone. "If you wouldn't mind bringing me a drink…that would be great. Bloody Mary? Tall glass of bourbon, perhaps?"

Furrowing his brows, he said, "I don't think that would be appropriate on the job, Inspector. And if I've learned anything from Masaoka, it's that alcohol won't fix a clouded hue. I'm more than a little surprised that you would…"

She interrupted, voice full of irritation, "Oh my God! Can't you even tell a joke when you hear one? Obviously I would never drink on the job. What kind of inspector do you think I am, Ginoza? Shit! As for my hue, it's perfectly fine. Go ahead and check it with your dominator if you're so concerned!"

He found that he was extremely taken aback. She never scolded him like this when he missed her sarcasm. She would only tease him further, but she never got aggravated this way. "No, that—that's not neces…" but she cut him off again.

"Here. I'll do it," she huffed, yanking his dominator up and towards her, pressing his finger onto the trigger with her own.

"Target is a registered Inspector. No enforcement required." Her number was in the high 30s and her hue a nice, pale blue. Despite how agitated she seemed, it didn't affect her psycho-pass. Then again, he hadn't thought it would have. He was still surprised by her attitude and what was happening. He stood before her, unsure what to say or do next.

"Listen, I know I seem a little out of sorts, but I will be okay. I just need a few minutes alone... and you really need to work on recognizing sarcasm, if we're going to keep getting along," she said. Then her eyes did a scan from head to foot of his body, sizing him up. It made him feel self-conscious.

"I'll give you the time you need. I will also," he straightened his glasses and huffed, "work on recognizing sarcasm." He turned to leave, but her voice stopped him.

"Inspector? Sorry I've been so short tempered today. I _do_ appreciate the concern. Thank you."

He placed a hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture, nodded, and then trudged to the ever expanding pit to check on their enforcers.

He heard Kougami's voice carry across the area, "Are you serious?! You can't possibly tell that!"

Mina was giggling by the time he reached the two. "No. You can't, but for just one second, you actually believed me. Priceless!"

Hound 3 pushed her over, into a pile of dirt, ashed his cigarette, and continued to gently remove loamy soil from the eye sockets of the skull. "Damn it, woman!"

"Excuse me. This is a crime scene, and I expect the pair of you to act professionally," he scolded. Both looked at him and frowned. "Is there any way I can assist?"

Nakamura sifted through dirt and placed what looked like rock into a plastic evidence bag. "I need pictures as we unearth more of it. That way, if we accidentally move something before mapping, we can still see the positioning."

"You can do that with your communicator, Enforcer," he said, bewildered that she didn't already know that. He saw Kougami give her his own baffled stare.

"Oh. Yes. I guess I forgot," she said, looking uneasy.

He took a few pictures, if only to have something to do. Otherwise, he would just continue staring at his partner, who was now pacing at the tree line.

Masaoka brought over water, and both of the digging enforcers stopped to take a short break.

"She says that it looks like the kid was vitamin D deficient, to the extreme. May be child abuse," Kou stood beside him, watching the little brunette take in the landscape.

"How the hell can she tell that?" Ginoza hated feeling out of the loop on information.

"Said the long bones are bowed, and it really can't be anything else. Looks like she knows her shit," his former partner said, lighting another cigarette.

Before he could respond, the little brunette cut in. "Do you guys see that?" She gestured to the long grass that was really everywhere but the forest.

"The grass?" Kou asked, confused.

"No. The change in it." She grabbed a large stick and walked about twelve feet. Slowly, she inserted the stick into the ground, repeating the process at least five times in different spots. "You guys can't see it from here?"

Ginoza shook his head. "What are you getting at?" He felt momentary relief as his partner had finally edged up beside him.

"I might be crazy, but..." Nakamura cut herself off and sprinted to the tree line.

"What the hell is she doing?" Kamiya asked.

He explained the last few bizarre moments as they followed the enforcer. Pops and Kunizuka joined them, the whole of Division One watching the strange little woman.

"Mina, what the fuck are you doing?" Kougami sounded just as perplexed as Gino felt.

The woman grabbed onto a low branch and started to make her way up a large tree. "What does it look like? I'm climbing a tree!"

"Yeah, but why?" Kou was standing directly beneath it. Ginoza could tell he hated not being in the know as well.

Leaves fell, branches shook, and finally they could see her come up near the top. She was looking down at the clearing. They heard a soft, "Damn," and then, "I'm coming down!"

More shaking, more leaves, and then they could see her small booted feet. Mina almost made it down until the branch she was standing on cracked and quickly fell from under her. Ginoza marveled at just how quick his dad reacted. She fell directly into his arms, rubbing a spot on her back.

"Thank you, Pops," she said looking embarrassed.

"It was my pleasure. It's not every day that I get to carry a pretty lady in my arms," he was smirking at her. Ginoza suppressed the urge to groan and roll his eyes.

Finally on her own feet again, Nakamura approached. "I think there are more graves. It's easier to see from up there, but look." She pointed. "Do you see how some of the grass is shorter and a different color...more yellow?"

He looked, and he could. "Yes," both he and Erra answered in unison.

"That is an indicator of some type of environmental change, like burying a body. We should check at the very least and see if I'm right. And there is a change in the soil density too. That is what I was doing with the stick."

"You aren't finished processing what you started. We should just wait for the drones," he stated. This all felt too messy already, and who better to do that kind of work than the robots.

"It would be good to just know, inspector. I mean, what if this is a place where a serial killer is dumping bodies. The quicker we figure that out, the better off we'll be," she argued. It was in that moment that Ginoza saw a major similarity between Kougami and the short woman before him.

He sighed and looked at Erra, who if anything, now looked too composed. "I think I agree," she said. "Can Kougami finish what you guys started already?"

"I can," Kou said. Mina balked a little, looking torn. "I'll be careful. Pops will help me," he added.

"It's settled then. Nakamura, go see if your theory is correct," Kamiya ordered. He couldn't help but notice how she didn't even wait for his input. No matter how composed she looked, she was still in a snippy mood. "Let's go help her, Ginoza." The redhead tugged on his sleeve. He was becoming annoyed but he put forth no argument.

 _ **Erra**_

 _Damn the heat!_ She thought to herself as she helped skim a layer of dirt from a spot they had just cleared of grass. Ginoza kept on glancing at her, and such was her mood, she fought the childish urge to smack him in the nose. She knew she was acting strange and that it would worry the man after everything his previous partners had faced. Still, she could handle it herself.

Erra could not shake the foreboding feeling that skirted around her every thought.

This was exactly the kind of place they had sent Ren Kamiya to before he went missing. Ren had described it to her, sounding childlike in his enthusiasm. He had always liked the outdoors and found the remote nature of his new work site comforting. His love of nature had always baffled her.

The redhead hated it. She had hated it then, and she deplored it now. The bugs, the humidity, and the way every piece of foliage and dirt seemed to cling to her itching skin made her long for the air conditioned rooms of the CID.  
 _  
What if one of these people turn out to be Ren?_ That question had repeated itself over and over in her head. The idea of her loved one dying because of some psychopath made her nauseous.

Her gaze fell on Nakamura, who had smudges of dirt all over her person, and didn't seem to care one bit. The enforcer also seemed completely content in the heat. In all actuality she had rarely seen the brunette so happy. Kamiya fought the urge to smack at the girl, too. The fact that the humidity and the outdoors seemed to _agree_ with the woman filled her with aggravation.

"Nakamura, is this..." her partner started, uncharacteristically unsure.

The enforcer leaned in close and said, "I think it is. Uncover more. Switch to the bamboo sticks."

Within moments, Mina had declared that yes, it was bone. A few minutes later, they were sure it was human. "You can tell by the foramen magnum placement," the dirty brunette explained pointing to what was apparently an upside down skull.

"How many spots like this did you see?" Erra asked apprehensively.

"At least eight." Mina deliberated for a moment and said, tactfully, "I suggest we split up, so we can check more of the area."

Her partner, oddly enough, agreed and got up to tell the others. She noticed that Ginoza's demeanor had now changed. He seemed disturbed and confused as to what they had unearthed here. Erra watched him tap Yayoi on the shoulder as the two of them paired off to check another area. He became hyper-focused on the task at hand, and she was glad that he was no longer concerning himself over her.

The two women worked in silence, only pausing when Mina ascertained that this grave also held more than one body. The redhead was feeling faint for multiple reasons and announced that she needed water. She stood there, hating everything, and watching as Hound 4 took charge and gave everyone directions.

Her thoughts turned to Ren again, and how he had been ripped from her life so suddenly and traumatically that there was still a hole there. And now, she was looking at what might be his grave, letting memories surface that had been long buried. She remembered his smile and the way he would tug at her hair when he wanted attention. What if one of the skulls she had helped box up turned out to be him?

Erra was brought out of her dark thoughts with a nudge to the shoulder. Looking up, she saw Pops watching her with great concern. "You alright, Sass?"

She offered him a half-hearted smile. "I will be. I just need a distraction."

"Watch how quickly I can rattle that partner of yours," Masaoka said with a mischievous glint in his green eyes. Rather loudly, he asked, "Say, Inspector Ginoza, what's a man gotta do to bend that rule about personal relations between enforcers and inspectors?" He was very obviously checking out the beautiful redhead.

"Not now, old man! Can't you see we don't have time for one of your games," he rolled his eyes. "As if any inspector would be interested in you in the first place."

Masaoka sidled up next to Kamiya and slid an arm around her back, resting his hand on her waist. "I don't know. I can think of a few that might."

She smirked and gave him a naughty side-eye. "In your dreams, Pops!" she shot back.

"See, now that is precisely where I was hoping to get you out of, Inspector." As always, he was prepared with a smooth comeback. It was natural for the man. It was so good the way he had crooned it at her that it made her actually blush and laugh.

"You're incorrigible!" she scoffed, placing a quick kiss to his cheek.

"Alright, that's quite enough. You know that's out of the question, the both of you," her partner groaned.

"Oh, he's only teasing, Gino. Don't get so bent out of shape. You're not jealous, are you?"

"You're being quite unprofessional, Kamiya."

"He didn't answer the question, Pops. Did you hear that?" She kept her eyes on his increasing uncomfortable demeanor adding, "You didn't answer the question."

He adjusted his glasses and turned to the side, frowning at the pair of them acting like school children. It was adorable in Erra's opinion.

Nakamura called from the place she was digging, "Inspector Ginoza doesn't seem like the jealous type. He probably finds sex an enormous waste of time."

Everyone stopped what they were doing except for Mina and stared at the inspector, waiting to see him lose his cool. Erra bit back a laugh at the enforcer's crude statement and the fact that she hadn't seemed to realize it was out of place. Mina continued, "Pops on the other hand, I bet that's a man who—"

"Min, shut up!" Kougami hushed. She looked up and noticed the uncomfortable atmosphere she'd created and shrugged it off. Ginoza was walking alone back down the hill to their equipment carts. Sighing, Erra pat Masaoka on the shoulder and jogged a bit to catch up.

"Come to laugh some more?" he asked bitterly.

"I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at Nakamura and that mouth of hers. It's pretty amusing." Her partner looked as if he whole-heartedly disagreed.

"You know Pops and I were just kidding, right?"

"I wish you weren't so familiar with them."

"It is what it is, Inspector. You treat them your way. I'll treat them mine. Besides, it's a stupid rule…what if an enforcer and inspector were in love to begin with? What if they'd been married before the hue became clouded? What if they just really wanted to have hot sex?" she teased.

"The rule is there for a reason."

She rolled her eyes at his predictable answer.

"Passion makes people kind of crazy. Surely even you agree. There's no one that ever made you feel like you would break that rule?"

He stared at her for a long moment, concentrating especially hard, and a nervous energy tensed her abdomen.

"No," he said shortly. "I don't see that kind of thing happening for someone like me."

He grabbed water off the cart and left her standing there feeling terribly awkward and confused.

 _ **Kougami**_

As he strained dirt through a makeshift screen, searching for bits of bone or evidence, Shinya mused that this was what they had to do back in Masaoka's day. He was impressed at how much more intricate detective work was back then.

Still, he didn't understand how this could have happened now. It should have been impossible. Hell, had there even been this many missing person's cases since Sybil took over? Akane's words, memorized by now, flew through his mind. _Keep questioning. Seek answers._ What would she do if she were here with them? Would she draw parallels between Makashima and the possible serial killer responsible for the mess they were literally digging through? Could they have another criminal impervious to Sybil's justice?

He missed that fresh-faced inspector so much it physically hurt. Where would he and Akane be, right now, if she had not taken his death?

The work was back breaking, and Kougami was glad for it. The ache in his back and knees assisted in distracting from all the possible implications of finding a mass grave. If his mind wandered too far, it may never snap back. With a quick look up, he spied Gino focusing diligently on the task before him. He worried over the inspector's hue. Was he asking the same questions? That was dangerous business where it concerned Ginoza.

A little break was far overdue. The man lit a cigarette and closed his eyes to think.

His note trading with Nakamura had proven that he wasn't completely faithless in terms of Sybil. Every now and then, he actually defended it, realizing that if someone were to fight the structure that ran everyone's life in Japan, that person would have to realize it would be a collapse of a society. On the other hand, on days like today, when he was faced with what could only be something greatly unjust, all happening under the nose of Sybil, he was less forgiving. Nothing could defend the number of dead they unearthed or the atrocities perpetrated by people like Makashima. Change needed to happen. The question was "how?"

There was no doubt of foul play in his mind. This wasn't an old cemetery. The bodies were stacked without care or sign of ritual evident in most funerary practices.

 _Damn it_ , he thought, hating his own agitation.

Without thinking, Kou found himself trudging toward Ginoza and quietly sitting next to the man. Knowing the process well enough now, he grabbed a few handfuls of dirt, recently pulled out of the grave, and started sifting through it. The unsettling feeling that had been so overwhelming just minutes before seemed to ebb a bit.

"Get back to work. You heard Nakamura. It'll be faster if we split up," Gino said.

Kougami didn't answer him, knowing that while it would annoy his former partner, it would also make it clear that he didn't give a damn about going back to where he had been digging. This type of work, the unveiling of the dead, was better done in pairs. At least, he thought so.

He had the ulterior motive of watching his friend a little closer, gauging his mental state. As uptight and closed off as Gino could be, Shinya had always been able to read him. The enforcer had failed his best friend in that respect over the last several years. He had paid little attention to the stress Ginoza was under, concentrating all of his energy on Makashima. His obsession with catching Sasayama's killer had consumed him until he was almost completely devoured. If it hadn't been for Akane's sacrifice, he didn't know where his mind would be right now…or Gino's.

He had made a promise to himself to be a better friend, whether Gino wanted it or not. Right now, he could tell, merely because of the way the other man was hyper focusing on the task before him, that he was extremely bothered. Ginoza liked to keep tabs on his hounds, and whenever he let that attention slip, Kou knew something was weighing heavily on the man's mind.

He considered doing something to piss his boss off, if only to distract the inspector, but decided against it. He picked out what might have been a portion of a tooth, holding it up to the sunlight, wondering if there was any point in bagging it, when he noticed that Ginoza's hands had stopped moving. A quick look over the inspector's shoulder revealed a skull that very obviously belonged to a child.

The look on Gino's face made him want to punch something. He had pulled his glasses off his face and was pressing his knuckles into closed eyelids, like he might be able to force away whatever image he had conjured of this child's death.

Now, Kou had to think of something to bring his former partner out of the dark place his mind must be circling. He considered faking knocking into the inspector before a shock of red hair and pale skin caught his attention. It was obvious to Kougami how much his friend doted on the woman…if you could call it that, while talking about Nobuchika Ginoza. Now he had something to bring up that would certainly distract Gino.

"I think Inspector Kamiya might need a little help over there. She looks like she is about to pass out." He pointed to where the pretty redhead was slouched against a tree, looking like she was about to have a heatstroke. It was odd for him to see her like this. Since joining Division One, the woman had proven to be damned near tireless, and typically, on top of her game. As soon as she had started working with them, she hit the ground running. She had needed little instruction, unlike Akane. She was also much bossier than the little brown-eyed inspector had been.

Today, she seemed rattled, and the heat was not agreeing with her. In fact, he thought he saw telltale signs of a sunburn forming. As to why she was upset, Kou had his own theories, and thought it best to keep them to himself. If he was certain of one thing, it was that Inspector Kamiya wanted to keep the source of her anxiety to herself.

"She told me to leave her alone," Gino muttered.

"Still a heartbreaker, I see," Kou joked. Seeing that his friend looked equally as stressed about being pushed away, he tried again. "Even if she did tell you that, she needs water again, Gino. Look at her. She's obviously not able to concentrate today. Don't let her faint."

Green eyes glanced across the field to the tree, and Gino huffed a sigh of frustration. "I'll be back. Take over, and try to be less nosy," Kamiya's partner said, standing up and dusting off his pants. Shinya felt a small sense of accomplishment at getting his pal thinking about something less traumatic.

With a grimace, Kougami squatted and went to work, moving dirt away from the deceased child, so that his friend wouldn't have to when he returned. Only once did his thoughts wander back to the last Shepherd 2, who he listened to every morning, and it was to think of all he could have taught her and all they could have shared. She would have made a phenomenal detective, that was for sure, and she would not have balked at the complexity of their new case. She would have pressed forward and done what needed to be done. It was times like this that made him feel especially transformed by Akane Tsunemori.


	7. Chapter 7: Unfair Developments

_**CHAPTER SEVEN: Unfair Developments**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this __fic.

 _ **Mina**_ _ **  
**_  
Mina carefully dug around the thorax of one of the three bodies that had been dumped in these outskirts and shuffled the collection of facts that had accumulated since arriving at the site.

 _Fact one_ , almost none of the bodies had clothes. The team had started the slow process of uncovering at least ten people, and only three, thus far, had remnants of clothing that were looking disturbingly like hospital gowns. Otherwise, they found no cloth, buttons, zippers, or any of the other normal things usually left behind by clothing. It meant that these poor people had been dumped there nude.

 _Fact two_ , they were definitely dumped there. One could expect some small displacement as bodies rotted. Weather, earthquakes, and even tree roots were all culprits of moving bones, but none of that could account for the blatant evidence that the dead were thrown into very large pits, landing every which way. Some were prone. Some were supine. Many seemed to have been stacked on top of each other. Either way, it lacked evidence of any pattern that might have indicated that the graves were funerary in nature.

 _Fact three_ , from what little she could see, they were not archaeological. A few wore busted communicators, which was very recent technology. It reminded her of the wrist bands the Unregistereds had managed to commandeer when she was a child. Slightly outdated, the bands had still managed to change her people's lives. There were medical devices that, no doubt were current technology. Even Unregistered doctors had access to that kind of hardware because of her brother's black market trading. She had seen some obvious wiring and connecting ports for a cybernetic leg. No one could call that archaeological.

Nakamura would also bet money on the fact that some of the medical devices they had found were recent as well.

The woman had a very active imagination that, unfortunately, supplied her with many different scenarios as to why and how the bodies managed to get there. None of what she fathomed was good.

Frustrated, she came out of her squatting position, stretched, and made her way around to see how the others were doing. As Mina checked on the inspectors and Yayoi, she consciously formed a wall around her self-doubt, knowing that it had no place here, at a crime scene. It also helped her quell the urge to admit that she was no expert and had little to no real life experience with skeletal crime scenes.

Her experience with bone identification came from adults who had no problem satisfying her morbid curiosity. She had asked, and they had taken her to the graves of her long dead relatives, allowing her to sift through the bones and ask anything she wanted. Every year afterward, during their Festival of Bones, she repeated the process, learning something new every single time. In a way, her fascination with death brought her closer to her family. What better way to learn than with the bones of loved ones, they had concluded.

But this was different. She was working on memory from the multitude of books she had read on the subject. If they asked her to do lab work, it would be a long process, because Nakamura knew she would have to constantly go back and check herself with reference material. There was pressure coming from many different sources. First and foremost, the dead that had been chucked here, they deserved rest and justice. Hopefully, the drones would be able to sort this out.

Nakamura was also painfully cognizant of just how badly she needed to prove herself a worthy member of the team. If she fucked this up, it was probably the last strike. The tension that surrounded the team was palpable, and she could understand why. This wasn't supposed to be possible with Sybil in charge. It was throwing a wrench in the cogs of the system they used to run their entire lives. If these people hadn't been part of the police force, they never would have even needed to _think_ on their own.

Mina had kept her thoughts to herself, assuming that the findings would be better received through the robots. She also couldn't afford to reveal her findings and then have it come up wrong. That would certainly rock their already shaky confidence in her.

She made her way to Masaoka, who had quite the pile of dirt behind him, waiting to be sifted through the strainer. "Hey Pops, how are you holding up? Got any questions?" she questioned, sitting down and starting the arduous but necessary process of sifting through soil.

"Not yet, Trouble." He paused a moment and gave her a very steady appraising look. The old man's eyes seemed to take in her face the longest. Then he said,

"This work seems to agree with you. You remind me of someone I met a very long time ago, back when I was a detective, before Sybil was instituted into the justice system."

"And who is that, Pops?"

"Another person named Nakamura, actually. I met him at a mandatory training course. He was teaching us to process skeletal crime scenes, just in case technology failed us, as it seems to have done today."

Mina knew he would be able to see the tension in her body. There was no way to stop it though. "What an interesting coincidence?" she tried to say nonchalantly. Odds were, that man had been her father.

"Interesting. Yes...I seem to remember him having hair the color of yours and some of the brightest blue eyes. More strange coincidences, I suppose." The lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled at her.

She felt like the breath had been knocked out of her.

"I haven't thought about that in many years. I wonder what that man is up to now," he mused, not taking his focus off of the woman.

" _He's left this earth, Old Man_ ," she wanted to say. She was almost positive it had been her dad. "Who knows, Pops? Best not to dwell on the past." Mina stood up and squeezed his shoulder. "I'm going to go and check on the others. Yell if you need anything."

She tried to keep her steps unhurried, but found herself almost jogging toward Yayoi. Mina stopped and headed toward the tree line, realizing that a little break away from the others was needed. Masaoka had brought up memories better left buried deep.

Michio Nakamura had been a brilliant forensic anthropologist, father, and husband. She could remember sitting on his knee looking at osteology manuals and asking questions, and much to her favor, no subject was too taboo for him to discuss. Even to this day, the woman found herself wishing for his guidance, and hating his decision to leave her and Kishio alone.

Nakamura could remember when she found his body, syringe still sticking out of his arm, and in his hand, a picture of her mother. Her brother had not been far behind her that morning. It was the only time she ever saw her brother cry. Even when her mother had been taken in a raid, he had never shed a tear... at least, not in in front of her.

The little brunette punched a tree focusing on the pain of scraped knuckles and jarred bones. It would do no good to think of her family now. They were all dead, and the best she could do was live her life. She was alone...left behind, and no tears could change that.

She missed her people and true home to the point of pain. If she were home, Mina would be helping gather fruit, raiding the forgotten and decrepit cities of old Japan, stealing hyper oats, pulling fishing nets, and enjoying the myriad of festivals dedicated to the changing of the season. These celebrations would be entirely representative of the various cultural groups that made up the UR population.

A week later, every group, (they had separated out of necessity due to raids), would come together for the Festival of Bones. It was a time when her people were at their most vulnerable with everyone coming together, but it was so important that none chose to miss it. This event was the only ritual that was entirely unique to the Unregistereds as a group. The history behind it was morbid and sad, but it had turned out to be a time to gather as a single cohesive group and pay homage to their ancestors. Later, the missing were added to the roster of those to remember and honor. This was where she had learned about bones, and she was going to miss it this time. She had missed it for over five years now. She wouldn't be able to pay proper respect to her father, mother, and brother, and it ate at her.

Leaning against her impromptu and rather unforgiving punching bag, Nakamura let the smells and textures of the forest seep in and give her a piece of home. The simplest of memories trickled through, but it was all the more poignant for its normalcy. Mina and her brother were sitting outside on a warm summer night eating pomegranates, and teasing each other, as usual. It wasn't long before they had started a mini war, spitting the seeds at each other, effectively grossing out Kishio's boyfriend of the time.

It made her all the more aware that that was something she could no longer do. Her brother was dead, and she wasn't permitted out of the CID without an escort. How would Inspector Ginoza react to a request to simply sit outside at night?

Reality slapped Mina in the face again as she caught sight of Masaoka digging. She was here, unearthing the dead for Sybil, and doing it with Sybilites. Her mind had come full circle, back to the skeletons, and back to the fact that they were looking at a mass grave. The people they found here deserved proper funerals... Nakamura wondered at how people here conducted such matters. Once again, her thoughts turned to the missing Unregistereds and how they would never see a proper burial. Anger overflowed once more. The tree suffered more assaults to its bark, before she heard footsteps behind her.

"I think the tree's winning," Kougami said, looking bemused and eyeing her carefully. The rumor mill provided her with the knowledge that the man was a magnificent profiler, which scared the shit out of her.

"Hmph. Best fight it's had in centuries, I bet." Self-consciously, she wiped her bloody knuckles across the rough fabric of her fatigues.

The way he stared became pointed. "Hold still," he commanded. A hand came out and rubbed at her chin. "You are very dirty," he said, looking at his fingers.

The woman started to drag her own digits across her face, but one look showed that her hands were filthy.

"The drones are here. They want us to start the hike back."

Looking over, she saw little and big robots stationed around the many graves they had started uncovering. The others were packing up. Pops had two large cases in his hands, and she wondered at how well he would hike with them.

As they made their way silently back to the paddy wagon, she started to feel the full effect of the strenuous work day. Climbing the ramp into the wagon made her feet feel like lead. She was exhausted emotionally and physically.

Nakamura must have fallen asleep on the way back, because one second, she was fussing at her brother and his rowdy friends, and the next, her brother morphed into Kougami. His voice floated to her, a smooth mix of cigarettes, hard liquor, and certainty. He was so cocksure, and if he wasn't so handsome he probably wouldn't get away with it.

"Mina."

"No," she said. She didn't want to see Kou. She wanted her brother back, even just for a second.

"Mina," his voice was softer than normal.

More aware than before, she realized that she was asleep against his arm. "Mnnggh," she groaned, opening her eyes for only a second then nuzzling into her 'pillow'.

"Damn, you're a hard person to wake up," he stated, voice low.

She was still against his shoulder, confused. "Huh?" She knew he'd said something. _Hadn't he?_ It was of no use anyway, because her eyes started to droop shut again.

"Exactly," he said sounding amused, tugging lightly on her hair. Warm palms were against her shoulders, sitting Nakamura upright. "You can sleep later. We have a debriefing to go to."

"I'll carry her," Pops said in an exaggerated voice.

That woke her up enough to shake her head. No one was carrying Mina Nakamura anywhere. Shakily, the woman came to her feet and walked into the building. Kougami was leading her, hand pressed lightly between her shoulder blades. They filed back into the office, and gathered around the two inspectors. Mina noted that Erra looked perturbed and just as tired as she felt. It was also of note that Ginoza was eyeing his partner with care and worry.

Once everyone was paying attention, Erra stated, "We received the drones' report while we were headed back."

"Wow, that was really fucking quick," Mina said, forgetting to censor her speech.

"Yeah, too quick," Masaoka added.

"They sent it before the rain even started," Ginoza added, looking perturbed.

"What are you dancing around?" the little brunette asked snippily.

"They came to the conclusion that it was archaeological." Kamiya sounded sad and frustrated.

"On what fucking grounds? There is no way... Please tell me you all agree. You saw! You saw the same things I saw! You guys know that's wrong. Please tell me you do!" She saw red, outraged.

"Sybil couldn't identify the bodies, and therefore assumed the bodies were historical. They are going to be incinerated this afternoon," Gino supplied, looking like he didn't quite believe the logic either. It was maddening that despite that look on his face, he was still going to just allow it to happen.

"They didn't even have time to dig them all out. There is no damned way. Can you guys appeal this?"

"No. I already tried," the redhead looked somewhat depressed…defeated even. It was an emotion Mina had never seen on the woman's face.  
Kou tapped Nakamura's shoulder, demanding attention, making her lock with his eyes. "What were your findings, Mina? Why are you so sure?" he was looking at her intently.

"There were ports and wiring for cybernetic arms and legs. Some of the other medical devices seemed recent as well. And there were indicators of foul play. You guys saw the hospital gowns. I bet if we checked on the dental work, it would all be recent too... And I saw some signs of violence— broken bones partially healed, I noticed green around some of the bones and found copper wiring, as if their hands had been tied... stuff like that. The whole site was indicative of mal intent. How could Sybil fucking miss that?!"

It was the most ludicrous thing she could imagine. A super computer that couldn't deduce what she could from just a few hours of work. Something was _very_ wrong with this situation. "I could _show_ you all, if I had the remains, and you would see it, plain and clear as day."

 _Maybe they couldn't identify them because they weren't in the system. Maybe they were Unregistered. Maybe Sybil just set fire to the only lead I have on finding out what happened to my people._

Her thoughts were wild, but she tried to calm her features because both Kougami and Masaoka were looking at her, trying to read her.

"We still have the first four we dug out," Pops supplied.

"Wait, you didn't make a manifest and give it to the bots?" she asked.

He scratched the back of his head and said, "Looks like I must have forgotten to add those few. Guess it works out better for us, eh?"

 _Clever old man!_ Mina silently praised. All of them knew there would be only one reason he would "forget."

"Who said that we weren't going to turn over that evidence? We need..." Ginoza started, but as much as she feared him throwing her back into rehab, this was something she most certainly could not stand for.

"What the hell?! We are just going to ignore a mass grave? Why? Because the infallible Sybil System couldn't figure it out?"

"That's right!" he shouted back, but she could see his jaw clench after the words. It was enough to let Mina know that even _he_ was doubting Sybil on this one.

She tried quickly to come up with some solution to which he would consent and came up with nothing that could possibly appeal to the rule following inspector. They were glaring at each other. He knew that something was amiss, but was choosing to ignore it for rear of recrimination. It seemed so useless and unfair. The more she thought about the possibility of them being Unregistereds the more frustrated with the situation she became. They could be _her_ people, damn it!

"Fine then," she said. _If they aren't going to do anything about it, I am at least going to get a look at what we brought back, and they will have to pry them from my hands._

She walked toward the door, intent on getting to the boxes and hiding them in her room until they inevitably came for the dead. Nakamura quickly made a list of things she could use to bar the door. This place was so damned backwards if this was how they treated a mass grave.

She didn't make it ten steps before Pops blocked the way out with his body and Kougami grabbed her wrist, trying to pull her resisting form back beside him. They were at an impasse. She refused to budge, and he refused to release his hold. Kou's eyes focused on the compass tattoo on her wrist. She had caught him staring at it more than a few times. He always looked at it like he was trying to memorize the contours of the ink. Mina knew that if he really wanted, he could use brute strength to move her.

Instead, he said, "Min, I know what you are thinking. I can read it all over your face. Don't do it."

"Let go of me," she hissed, trying to twist out of his fingers and failing. A quick look showed that Ginoza was scowling, but Erra looked deep in thought, studying the scene in front of her.

Nakamura noticed the signs of panic floating through her limbs. She could see the faces of the taken with perfect clarity. Five years of her life may have been missing, but the years before that were clear. The wails of mothers who lost children, cries of orphaned little ones, and the helplessness of everyone left behind after a raid flooded her senses. There were so many, and they had not a single clue as to what happened or why. Her brother had found something and died for it, and in her grief, Mina had failed to go get that information. Oh how stupid she had been. She wasn't going to fail this time. She owed it to her people to at least look at the dead.

With a jerk and a twist she surprised Shinya and managed to break the hold and had every intention of knocking the old man down. She had to try. The woman wouldn't be able to forgive herself if she didn't.

She heard Erra say, "Shit, grab her."

Masaoka was never in any danger. Kou had wrapped one arm around her waist and the other around her chest. The hold was tight, and the only way of getting out of it was to hurt him, which was something she didn't want to do. Still, a struggle ensued. Nakamura was worked up, breathing far too hard, and close to tears.

"Hound 4, you need to get a hold of yourself and accept..." the black haired inspector started, but she interrupted, yelling.

"This is wrong! And you all know it!" A survey of the room showed looks of shock and maybe even guilt. "What is _wrong_ with you people? I get that you have grown up without having to worry, because of Sybil and..." _Stop now Mina._ _You are saying too much... making it too obvious._ Her brother warned from inside her head. A short frustrated scream made the grip around her constrict in response. "Those people had families, friends... people who miss them... love them." The woman tried to break free one more time and had to admit defeat. He didn't let go, even after she sagged. "The people who care about them deserve to... hell... just imagine it. Someone you love and care about is in your life and then one day they just don't come home... can't be found. It leaves a hole that can never be filled, because you don't know if they're alive or de..."

Kamiya's voice cut in loud, clear, and more emotional than Mina had ever heard from her. "If we give you the time, can you process all the remains that we have without lab equipment?"

"Yes. Just let me look at them. I know I can at least prove..."

"Wait! What exactly are you saying, Kamiya? We could lose our jobs over this. It's illegal and a direct violation of orders. You can't seriously be considering allowing this!" said Inspector Ginoza.

Mina's eyes widened and she stood very still as she noticed that Inspector Kamiya's eyes appeared full of tears. She had kind of believed that the woman's empathetic mannerisms were an act to gain trust, but perhaps she was wrong. Maybe Kamiya felt deeply for these poor people. Whatever the case, it was clear that Mina had struck a nerve.

As the redhead turned to face her partner, Mina was surprised again by these people as the harsh Inspector Ginoza's face turned immediately to worry. He seemed as unnerved as Mina felt at seeing Kamiya's eyes so full of tears over this.

"Inspector Ginoza," his partner started softly, "this needs to happen. Nakamura is right. These people and their families deserve justice. We need to find out the truth about what happened to these people. I have to know. I understand if you can't allow it. I don't want you to lose your job over my actions." Kamiya turned her head towards her enforcers and Nakamura saw a tear slip down her cheek as she added words that made Mina tense. "I understand if you have to turn us in to the chief."

Mina wasn't sure her eyes could get any bigger as she stared at Ginoza waiting for his reaction. She hadn't even realized she was holding her breath until the man tugged out his pocket square and pushed it easily into Kamiya's hand. When the woman inspector turned to look at him again, Mina let out the breath as he asked quietly, "It's that important to you?" Kamiya nodded and he frowned deeply, touching her hand to gently remind her of the handkerchief, which she quickly dabbed under her eyes.

Suddenly, Nakamura realized just how much Ginoza favored his partner, and she almost took joy in the fact that there was anything in life that could cause that man to soften. Until now she had seen him as a purely hateful individual who took no pleasure from anything, but during this moment everyone saw a brief glimpse of a different side of the man.

"I'm not going to turn you over to the chief. That—that's going overboard. I trust you to do what's best. Nakamura can have the remains for two weeks. After that, they have to be out of here or every one of us will lose our jobs."

"Yesss!" Mina cheered in a whisper. Ginoza shot her a look and adjusted his glasses, back to looking as stern as ever.

"That's assuming that no one else on our team has objections to this. I won't put you three in danger of losing your jobs," he said, surprising Mina again as he gestured to his veteran enforcers.

Thankfully, Kougami, Masaoka, nor Kunizuka had anything to add. After discussing a few more details, the team headed out but not before Nakamura leaned over to Yayoi and whispered, "Is it me or do those two clearly need to fuck?"

 _ **Ginoza**_

Kamiya had scheduled a three day weekend for herself, taking the following Monday off. When asked, she would answer no further than to say "personal reasons," which Nobuchika found very unlike the woman. He also found it unusual that despite having found a mass grave that would now require their attention because _she_ had _insisted_ , she was still opting to take the time out of the office. She had been distant and distracted all day, and Gino thought perhaps the day off would do her some good so he didn't press for her to continue working.

When he had asked her privately to explain why she'd been so adamant over not turning in the extra remains, she merely responded, "Please forgive me, Inspector. It's an extremely personal reason, but I don't think I'm ready to share it with anyone just yet. Certainly not today. Ask me again when I get back from the long weekend, ok?"

It made him uneasy to see her behaving so strangely towards him. She was usually the one person he could count on to treat him like he wasn't a nuisance.

Also unlike her, she packed up to leave right on time. She almost always stayed late, especially on Fridays. Many times it would be just Kamiya and him in their offices, filling out paperwork and going over cases. They both liked to leave no loose ends before starting the weekend, and it had become a time that he looked forward to each week. One would always have a question about paperwork for the other, which would be quickly answered. That was followed with casual conversation as they took the files upstairs to the chief's desk and made their way to separate cars.

What Nakamura had said about him earlier that day would normally not have been that far off the mark. The hyper-focused inspector _did_ generally find sex and relationships to be an enormous waste of time and a potential danger to his psycho-pass. However, he no longer seemed to be on the fast track at the CID. Ever since he had begun to question things during the Makashima case, the chief had quickly tired of him and discarded him. Now his partner appeared to be the new favorite. Ginoza wasn't entirely surprised, and not even sure where he stood on the matter.

He wasn't the type to feel jealous over a woman, and Mina's words would normally have just rolled off his back. Now that he didn't spend as much energy concentrating on impressing the chief, things were different. More often than not, he fought with himself to control the thoughts of his partner that kept creeping into his mind…thoughts of her naked, sweating, writhing, calling his name. It shamed him. She was intelligent and able and respected him as her leader, and all he could picture of her when he was alone were his hands roaming her glorious body.

Kamiya had been right earlier. It had made him feel a twinge of jealousy to see her flirting with his father, especially when she was familiar enough to kiss his cheek. He had to stop looking at them as he silently yelled at himself for wanting that innocent kiss for his own. She was becoming quite important to him for reasons other than desire. The fact that he still wanted her physically despite that, continued to cause him great frustration.

It had been a long time since Ginoza had felt so relaxed around another person, or that someone had even been able to tolerate his personality so well. She wanted his company. She treated him like her friend as well as a co-worker. Sometimes, on those late Friday evenings together, she actually asked him to wait for her when Chief Kaisei would ask to see her in the office alone.

"I don't like her," Kami mentioned one of those times. "Something about her makes me very nervous. Can't you at least wait in our offices until I'm done?"

"I'm not sure what you think will happen to you in there."

"I'm not sure what I think either. I can't get a good read on her and I don't like it. Aren't you supposed to provide back up support, _partner_?" she asked, giving him a simple smile.

"Tch," he huffed. "I don't think this counts as back up, Inspector. How did you even get promoted this far if you're scared of Chief Kaisei?"

"I didn't say I was scared. I just don't like her. I'd rather end my week with a friendlier face."

"I don't know who you expect me to go get. I'm the only person left at the office at this hour."

"Ginoza, _seriously_?"

"Yes. You saw everyone else leave before we came up here." She had said goodbye to several of them and he worried perhaps she wasn't feeling alright after not seeming to remember that.

"My God," his partner groaned as she shook her head and buried her face in her palm. Looking back up at him with great incredulity, she added, "You. I meant _you_ , you idiot. Of course, my partner would be my 'friendly face!' I speak to you more than anyone else here, Gino. Do you really think I find you more off-putting than _that_ woman? I can't…I just…" She let off a frustrated huff.

"No, I just…a 'friendly' face? That's not a description I've ever received. It wasn't necessary to make friends with my co-workers to succeed. Experience has shown me that personal attachments get in the way. Besides, I don't tend—"

"Oh," Kamiya said sounding somewhat dejected. "I thought we were already becoming friends, Inspector. I wasn't aware you found my company so taxing."

"What? No. That wasn't my point. It's that people here find that my dedication grates on th—"

"Good. So then you're saying you _will_ wait for me?" she interrupted.

"I…o-ok." He had no other answer to offer, shocked as he was that she hadn't already been offended enough to just leave him standing there in confusion. Ginoza turned out to be glad that he'd said "ok," because he found that his weekends were indeed better begun just from walking his partner to her car. That initial response eventually became a prepared, "Back up support, this evening?" and he would wait at the end of the hall by the elevators, enjoying topics irrelevant to police work as they left for the weekend. Allowing someone to be friendly with him was new and uncomfortable at times, but he was quite enjoying himself.

He had learned more about Kamiya in a few weeks of this pattern than he had about most people in his entire life. She was talkative with him and he was happy to let her carry most of the conversations. He knew her favorite books, songs, that she had only ever kept fish as pets (which he found completely ridiculous), that she was allergic to cats and that at one time she had been a dancer. He wanted to hear more about her dancing, but she had yet to elaborate. He had hoped it would be soon.

But not today. Today she would not be headed to see Kaisei or taking extra time for paperwork. Today she was anxious to get away from CID for whatever reason. Today she wished everyone a hasty goodbye and was the first of Division One to want out of the office. Today Gino felt disappointed.

After talking briefly with part of her team outside the HQ doors, the redhead said, "Have a nice weekend, boys," and headed down the long hallway towards the elevator.

Then Ginoza found himself doing it again. He just couldn't seem to keep his eyes off of his partner for long. He barely noticed that his father and Kougami were still standing to his left watching exactly the same thing.

Masaoka let out a low whistle, and Gino caught sight of Kougami nodding in agreement. Kou paused his unlit cigarette just before his lips, and he and the other enforcer shared a knowing glance, sly grins on their faces. Ginoza made annoyed faces at the pair.

Inspector Kamiya just missed the elevator. As she leaned to push the button, Inspector Shuichiro from Division Three appeared and pressed it for her. It was impossible to hear what they were saying from this distance. He couldn't even try reading their lips with them facing the elevator doors, but Ginoza found himself irritated at the way Shuichiro was clearly fawning over his partner. The man was married, after all. Shepherd One reminded himself that Kamiya worked in Division Three before being placed with their team. Her old partner was likely just being friendly, but Gino found it annoyed him either way.

He had let her distract him so much again, that he'd already forgotten he wasn't standing alone. That is, until the oldest enforcer said, "I'm not sure I've ever seen any that compare to the way that redhead beauty looks in a skirt."

Gino crinkled his nose and furrowed his eyebrows at his father in disgust, "Ugh! Could you not say that again? Ever? You're a filthy old man sometimes."

"Guilty," Masaoka chuckled slightly. "I don't deny that beautiful women have always been my weakness."

Kougami laughed and said, "Pops, 'weakness' is an understatement, don't you think?"

His father's behavior was making Gino very uncomfortable...or maybe that was due to Kamiya laughing and placing her hand on Shuichiro's arm. Either way, he scolded, "Both of you cut it out! Don't let me catch you talking about another inspector that way, got it?"

"Scold all you want, Ginoza, but I'd wager there's not a pair of eyes in this entire building that have been staring after Miss Sass more than yours," the old enforcer added bluntly.

"Watch your mouth, Enforcer!" Gino said as he shot his father a dangerous glare. A few seconds of silence followed, and Kougami awkwardly excused himself back into the office.

As the elevator's bell dinged and its doors opened, Shuichiro offered Kamiya his arm, and she accepted it onto the lift. He grimaced as the man obviously leaned back to view his partner's ass. "Tch," he huffed, watching her still laughing at whatever their colleague was saying.

"Just don't forget, son," Ginoza shot his father another dirty look as the familiar word left his mouth, but his father continued, "Inspector Kamiya is the type of woman a man notices. Inspector Shuichiro is not the first to try getting her alone, and I'm sure he won't be the last. Invite the woman for a drink or something."

"Would you please just stop talking?" Nobuchika begged, as he squeezed the bridge of his nose in his frustration. Kamiya was facing them now as the elevator doors closed and she noticed the two men still standing outside the office. She smiled brightly and waved goodbye again. Only Masaoka returned the wave.

"Suit yourself, Inspector," returned the seasoned ex-detective. "I know you hate my advice, but you'd be surprised, son," he added as he turned to begin walking back into the office, "what a little time alone with the right kind of woman can do for a cloudy hue."

Ginoza scowled after his father until he was completely through the doors to their office, and then he returned a hopeless gaze to the shut elevator doors.


	8. Chapter 8: What They Lost

_**CHAPTER EIGHT:**_ _**What They Lost**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this __fic.

 _ **** WARNING: This chapter contains a detailed lemon portion. Don't read if that deters you. ****_

 _ **Kougami**_

Another stressful week, another heated sparring session between Kou and the newest enforcer. Generally, the pair of them were alone in the matted room. It seemed they had made people nervous after that initial fight, not that that mattered now. Things didn't go overboard like they had during the first match anymore, and the two of them had greatly enjoyed trying to best each other as a means of stress release. He found that he enjoyed himself more in these moments than he had in a long while, and it seemed to him that she relaxed the most when they fought together.

Pinning her to the mat, he laughed at the thought and stood up. Satisfied that he had won this round, Kougami began to head to the side of the mats. His feet quickly left the floor as Mina made a sweeping motion with her leg and dropped him to the ground. She pinned his back against the mat by sitting on his chest and holding his forearms firmly above his head.

The two of them breathed heavily, eyeing each other for signs of true surrender and flicking their tongues to taste the blood that trickled from busted lips.

 _Hm. Maybe we do still go a little overboard_ , he thought. Something about tasting his own blood and watching her heaving above him, tongue running over her mouth, ignited profound desire in him.

Suddenly, Kougami grunted and pushed an arm free, grabbing Mina by the back of her chestnut ponytail and forcing their lips together. He kissed her passionately and powerfully with the same intensity he had given during the workout.

Pulling away from his lips and shoving his arm back to the mat, Mina shouted, "Who the hell do you think you are? You can't just kiss me whenever you feel like it!" But it seemed fierce passion was driving through her body as well, and she leaned down and captured his lips in hers, matching intensity as she kept him pinned beneath her.

As their tongues continued fighting passionately, Mina loosened her grip and Kougami grabbed her by the hips and slid her down his body so he could feel her against his hardened length. She lustfully ground against him and he let out a grateful moan before flipping her to her back and returning the favor. The two unloaded pent up frustrations there on the gym floor for several minutes until they were forced to surface for air.

Breaking the spell, Mina shoved him off of her and backed rapidly to the edge of the mats before standing up and grabbing her gym bag.

Kougami rose to his own feet and walked over to stop her. "What are you doing?" he asked, voice irritated at being interrupted. Clearly she had wanted him moments earlier.

"Keep your hands to yourself, you prick!" Mina shouted before jerking her arm away and heading to the locker room to shower.

Shinya stood watching her leave as he gasped for air and looked on confused as hell. As his breath slowed, he toweled away some perspiration and lit a cigarette. Skimming a hand through his sweat soaked hair he sighed, trying to make sense out of what had just happened.

Kougami bypassed the locker rooms altogether and walked straight to his dormitory apartment. It didn't bother him in the slightest that he passed random people while he was drenched in his own sweat, torso bare and glistening through the hall. Finishing his smoke, he entered the warm water of his shower and was grateful for the relief it provided his sore muscles. Leaning against the shower wall, he closed his eyes and just allowed the water to run over his body.  
 _  
What the hell just happened?_ Kougami thought to himself. He wasn't surprised that sparing with Mina had led to where it had. It was no secret to him that he found her exceedingly attractive and having her coming after him, soaked in sweat, fierce determination in her crystal eyes—how could he not have kissed her? She seemed to want him as well, but then shut everything down and backed away as if Kou had been something repulsive.

He stepped out of the shower and sat on the end of his bed drying off. He couldn't stop picturing the perfect fullness of her lips as he tasted them with his tongue, or the feel of her large breasts pressed against him with only a thin athletic bra to separate their skin. He shook his head and tried to concentrate on anything other than his hands pulling her hips down and against him.

Wrapping his towel around his waist, Kougami wondered what exactly he did to piss her off so thoroughly. It seemed he was always managing to anger the young enforcer, especially anytime they were actually getting along. She was brilliant and inventive and quick on her feet and made detective work more enjoyable for Shinya. They worked well together and while Kougami found that desirable, Mina seemed to find it irritating beyond belief. Any time they touched or he had tried to offer her genuine help, Mina would initially accept and then suddenly turn venomous and storm away, leaving Kou feeling like a complete miscreant.

It wholly perplexed the seasoned Enforcer, but it seemed to do nothing to make Mina less attractive. It made her more confusing and more frustrating, certainly—but that only made Kougami want to know more about the mysterious young woman. She had done nothing but peak his interest since becoming part of the team. Her knowledge of literature, martial arts training, randomly speaking some unknown language…it all made him want more and more time with her.

Kougami lit another cigarette and thought to himself how Mina had called him a prick. Just as he was thinking he had killed his chances with her for a while, there was a knock at his door. He pulled it open, to find Mina standing there, still looking angry. He stood aside and motioned for her to enter. Cigarette hanging limply from his lip as he spoke, Kou asked, " _Now_ what did I do?"

Mina observed him for a few moments, standing there in nothing but his towel, and even that seemed to make her livid. Groaning, she stood to her toes and pulled the cigarette from his mouth. "I don't like this thing going on between us," she sneered.

"Um," Kougami was taken aback and had no idea how to respond to such a blunt statement. "I'm sorry?" he responded, as if it were a question.

Snuffing out the cigarette, she stared at him coolly for a minute, sighed and pulled him down by the shoulders to her eye level. Her light blue eyes still looked irritated and Kougami was beginning to feel like she might be about to punch him. Instead, Mina laced her arms around his neck and gave him one of the most erotic kisses he'd ever experienced.

She pulled back slightly and Kougami responded, "I gotta tell you, I'm really confused about what's happening here."

Mina rolled her eyes, arms still wrapped around his neck and said, "Just shut up and fuck me already."

"Yes, ma'am," Kougami answered with no hesitation as her lips met back up with his. Quickly, he removed her shorts, abdomen tightening realizing there were no panties underneath. It was as easy for him to lift her small frame and press her into his door, as it was for her to knock his towel down to the floor.

Kou was attractive and it wasn't the first time in his life he'd been in a situation where a woman had come to him for sex, but it was the first time his own sexual tension for someone had built up this heavily. He braced himself with one hand to the door and the other on her small rounded ass. She had already been wet in her anticipation and he slid into her so easily that they both released appreciative moans. Kougami drove into the woman as if he could fuck her right through the wall and she clawed at his shoulders, begging him for more. Harder. Faster. Each of them had only pure lust on their minds and he was thankful for whatever god had brought her there that night. Being inside of Mina felt instantly addictive for Kougami. He could not recall the last time he felt this type of release.

She felt so tight and wet and it wasn't long before he came undone. Standing again for a moment, she pulled him down to his floor after her, saying, "You're not finished with me yet, Kou."

"Definitely not," he said as his orgasm-induced, hectic breathing slowed. He wanted to taste her body and was happy to be ordered to do so. First, he removed her shirt and bra. The man watched as she started to move her hands to cover herself but stopped, closed her eyes for a moment, and threw her arms around his neck, blush rising in her cheeks. Ever since their first sparring match, he had found his attention falling to her chest, and it was satisfying to see that part of Mina without the constraint of clothing. Kou's hands and mouth moved down her body, exploring, and finally settled on her breasts. .

With his mouth occupied laving her nipple, Shinya moved a hand down her body, noting the dip in her waist, flare of her hip, and soft skin of her inner thigh. His fingers lightly traced the outside of her center before entering her with one digit, noting that she was wet and still sticky with his release. Shinya found the feeling of it to be an erotic reminder of what they had just done against his door. Soon he was curling his fingers inside, all the while watching her face for signs he was doing things correctly.

When Nakamura came, she cried out and tried to buck away from his hand. Her attempts at slapping his hand away were to no avail. He held her to the floor by her hip making her ride through it, enjoying the tight clench around his middle and index finger.

Amazingly, he was ready again. Kou let her recover for a moment, enjoying the little jumps in her muscles, knowing it meant he had done a damned good job. Rubbing himself against the side of her thigh, he licked her nipples again. Nakamura, looking sated, messy, and sweaty, pushed him to his back and straddled his hips. Mina teased for a moment, biting her lip in way that made her seem naughty. He enjoyed the view of her chest. Their second time was just as great as the first, and soon, he reached completion filling her again.

As they lay in a sweaty heap on his floor, Mina was the first to move. She stood and replaced her clothes. Again, Kougami watched, baffled by her hurry.

Grabbing something from the table, Mina looked down at him as she reached his front door. "I don't know what this is, and I don't like it," she told him again. Coldly she added, "Stay away from me tomorrow," while tossing the thing in her hand to the man on the floor.

As Mina exited his apartment for her own Enforcer's dormitory, Shinya tried to figure out what the hell he had just experienced. Looking at what he'd just been thrown, Kougami realized it was his pack of cigarettes with the lighter stuffed in the half empty container. Grateful that she at least recognized he was going to need one of those, Kou lit one and took a long, deep drag. Laying back against his carpet, he watched as the little tendril of smoke curled lazily towards his ceiling.

Kougami might have been as confused as he'd ever been by a woman, but as he thought about everything this evening had brought him, he let out a soft chuckle and grinned up into the darkness.

Maybe enjoying his life wouldn't be as an unattainable goal as he thought.

 _ **Mina**_

Laying back against her pillows, Mina permitted herself a few minutes to enjoy her afterglow, soreness between her legs, and the sated feeling that came with releasing a profound amount of pent up tension.

Kougami had been much better than expected. When she had made the firm decision to approach him for sex, hoping to dispel the constantly nagging desire she felt, the assumption had been that he would probably be a selfish partner. He could get any woman he wanted. So, why should the man worry about putting forth too much effort?

A quick fuck, and then she would leave... that had been her plan.

But, he had surprised her. It was something he kept on doing, and it was kind of irritating. The man's mind questioned everything, which was something she had assumed Sybilites didn't do. Their book and letter exchange not only revealed a person who was actually disillusioned by the system, but also a man who challenged her world view. Nakamura hoped she was providing the same quality input for him.

It had been shocking to find him so ready so quickly. If she had read things correctly, he had been just as enthusiastic about their coupling as she was. Mina couldn't deny it. She had thoroughly enjoyed herself, and hated that she already wanted more. The image of his head thrown back, mouth open, emitting masculine grunts and harsh breath, face a perfect reflection of ecstasy as she rode him, was something that would not leave her mind. There was a reticence in her to admit that part of the appeal had been to be close to another human being, even if it was short lived.

Realizing she could still smell him on her, faint but definitely there, she let a mantra run through her head. _You can't go back to him again. You might get attached.  
_  
Telling herself that the mean words she launched at the frustrating man as she walked out the door would make him stay away, the woman let herself believe it would be easier on her end to keep him at an arm's length. Those words had been more for her benefit than anything... a reflection of the annoyance she felt for herself.

The driving force that had led her there was distraction. Nakamura had given in to the attraction she felt toward Kou, needing a diversion from the case and the devastating homesickness that grew worse every day.

Convincing Ginoza to keep the remains had been contingent upon her ability to process them and do it quickly, which caused her no small amount of worry. The four skeletons that were now residing in her kitchen were the only representatives left to whatever injustice had occurred to bring them to such unceremonious and crude resting places. Nakamura knew that she was the only choice to examine the bones and speak for the dead. There was no getting over the fact that all other evidence had been destroyed. Supposing that Sybil was the logic driven computer society trusted it to be, then it should have taken all the circumstantial evidence into account. The system could have drawn a blank and then worked from there to figure out the truth. If the boxes of bones turned out to be Unregistereds, that just added fuel to the fire of her rage. If that turned out to be the case, every human they uncovered had family and friends who deserved to know the fate of their loved ones. Mina included herself in that tally.

 _What if my mother was in the lot that was incinerated?_ she thought. _Would I know more if I could remember the last five years?_

The void in her memory caused such anxiety that she avoided thinking about it. In rehab, after she had given her name and then went silent, they had administered a scan to figure out exactly how old she was. So much time had been lost. The little brunette worried that the realistic dreams that had her waking in a cold sweat were actually memories, and if that was the case, then it was understandable that they were blocked out.

Rubbing the small bruise that Kou had left on her hip, trying to hold on to the euphoric feelings that the man had provided, she tried to think about happier things and failed. She kept on coming back to what she was missing with her people.

This was the week of the Summer Festival. If she were back home, Mina would be enjoying the food, dancing, music, bonfires, and camaraderie that came with celebrating the heat. It was a mix of the various cultural practices.

They would jump over bonfires and whoever jumped the highest was considered the luckiest. Some burned a wooden sculpture carved into the shape of the Kanji for fire. People would share their alcohol, and it was usually some of the best, made especially for the occasion. Some cultures would don masks and show off traditional dances. Her father used to call it a sociological wonder. Her brother, on the other hand, saw it as the perfect time to find a new boyfriend or girlfriend. Mina always mingled with every group and enjoyed all of it.

The worst part of being trapped in the CID was being unable to partake in the Festival of Bones. Her parents had supplied her with the history upon request, answering all her questions to the best of their ability. It had all started when they were still fleeing aimlessly from Sybil. A disease swept through the group. The fatality rate was high, and the illness worked quickly. Most died within two days, much too quick for them to build a proper quarantine. So many died that the group had to stop their movement. The victims of the disease piled up quickly, and after a week, it became apparent that if they wanted to have any type of proper funeral for them, they would have to have a mass service.

In a way, it was something that brought them all together. They managed to formulate something that appeased all the various cultures. The geography made it impossible to bury their loved ones, and although many of the group preferred cremation, the fear of drawing too much attention made that particular right impossible. So, they settled with placing the bodies in a huge series of caves, much like one would in a mausoleum. Their names were carved into the wall above them, sometimes along with an epitaph.

The group suffered two more waves of the disease and it seemed as though their numbers never grew despite the influx of people fleeing the system. It was a very hard time for the Unregistereds. When it passed, everyone moved on, looking for a way to live.

Quickly, it became evident that keeping the dead in one place made it easier to pay respects, and thus, the series of caves came to be the center of their seasonal migratory pattern, and the place where all those that passed away were laid to rest. It wasn't too long before as a group, they decided to start making a pilgrimage to the sight during the summer solstice. The living would enter the caves of the dead, grieve, talk, and cry out their lament. Everyone did it differently. There was even a group of Islanders (they refused to say _which_ island) who would wash and oil the bones of their dead relatives. The physical touch seemed to be important to them. This was why Mina handling bones as a preteen was not an odd sight. Others wrote letters and burned them in a fire. Some tied little notes to a tree. There was no right or wrong way to express sorrow during the Festival of Bones.

After they mourned, the various cultures gathered and celebrated life, theirs and those that had passed. It was a happy occasion that offset all the heartache.  
Later, after the raids, the missing were included in their rituals. The grief was the same, and it made sense. Even though, it was agreed upon, that those that were taken were not considered expired.

It was the only time of year that Mina allowed herself to shed tears and mourn the loss of her family. The custom made it possible for her to compartmentalize her anguish and move on. But there was no way of getting there while being jailed by Sybil. Maybe, it would be possible to find another way to assuage that need to intensely grieve and celebrate once a year.

Sleep that night brought dreams of Kishio. They were sitting in the CID office that Division One shared, and he looked just as he had when he died. His face was crushed in on one side, craggy bone pink with blood stuck through bits of skin. The right side of his head was flat, and the ear was hanging off to the side. The fingers of his right hand were twisted into odd angles, and clear cuts, obvious defensive wounds against a blade, riddled both forearms. Blood was everywhere. She talked to him, as though it were normal. Dream logic was at work, but of course she wouldn't know that until waking.

Her words came out quickly, describing the predicament in which she found herself. The case came next and her fears regarding it. And as she spoke, he started coming back together, looking more like himself. The flat side of his skull started to take on a normal shape, and without her seeing how, the ear was back in place. The woman described her complete loneliness in the new life she found. Her memory loss was laid out with the fear of what she was hiding from herself. When she had paused, Kishio had urged her to continue. "This will heal both of us, little sister," he said. The teeth that had been smashed in were back and made his smile look almost normal. So, she continued.

She talked of Erra's empathy. Ginoza was mentioned. She portrayed him as a man on a tightrope, clinging onto a precarious belief. Mina talked of Kou and how he was the exact opposite of what they had been taught Sybilites were. Most of all, the woman detailed their letter exchange, sparring, and the way he seemed to read her.

"In some ways, he is like you big brother: furiously intelligent, strong, kind in the strangest way, and dangerous. When I see those qualities come out..." she felt tears stream down her face. "I miss you so much." She managed to pull herself together and then say, "I think I did something stupid with Kougami tonight, and I hate that I was so lonely and weak as to..."

The man stopped her, looking almost completely normal again. "Never regret sharing something that connects you to another human being in a good way. You can't live without that. I know you, Little Terror. He seemed to be a good match for your intimacy. Accept the comfort." He smiled, lips back to being full. The tattoos were back to normal as well, rising up his neck. "Tell me more about your new friends. Who is Tetsuo, and what is he like?"

So, she told him about how she first met the nurse, and Kishio laughed. It came from deep in his belly and made him sound so very alive. Then she detailed the way her blonde friend smiled and how it had that infectious quality. Mina recounted the various ways he helped her keep at ease in such a stringent, boxed-in environment. He had a dark sense of humor, which she liked, and was the only one she had no fear of touching. Their friendship was turning out to have a lot of physical affection. It reminded her of how people back home were much more effusive than Sybilites.

"I wish you could meet them, Kishio. I wish you were here with me."

"Oh, Little Terror, you care for all of them. I can see it. Listen carefully though, one day you will have to..."

When Nakamura woke, try as she might, she couldn't remember the rest of his words. All she knew was that he had given her advice, and it had been important. He had commented on all of those she had talked about, and he had warned her of something. Whether it was one of her many dangerous tendencies or of her closeness to Sybilites, she would never know.

 _ **Erra**_

When she started working for the CID, before even being transferred to Division One, Erra had requested this day off from work. It was a painful day for her and she wanted to be alone. Six years ago, on this date, she had gotten the news from the PSB representatives that had changed her life. Her husband, Ren Kamiya was gone.

Ren met Erra when they were seniors at different high schools. She and his younger sister were both involved in competitive dance through middle and high school. He was volunteering to work a dance competition when the young redhead took the stage. She placed fourth in that event, but Ren Kamiya was hooked on her from that moment forward. He found her in the audience later and left her a note asking her for a date and saying that he was her future husband.

She had no idea who he was and every intention of ignoring it, until she was boarding the bus back to school later and spotted him standing a little ways off, giving her that cheeky, confident smile of his. She couldn't resist scribbling down her number and rushing it over to him before leaving.

After that, they basically became inseparable.

Dating was unusual in the Sybil society. With Sybil matching marriages, it wasn't necessary, but it was still something people did for fun until their true match was made. Ren had been confident, however, that he and Erra would be an excellent match from the start. He was confident to a fault, but he wasn't wrong in that respect. They were good together.

Ren supported her career aspirations from the start, even though it meant that they would have to wait awhile before she was ready to start on expanding their little family. Erra scored top marks on her exams and had the choice of any career path she wanted. What she really wanted was to become a therapist and discover ways to help people bring their crime co-efficients back from being labeled latent criminals. Two of her family members had spent a good portion of life locked away in a rehab facility, and she wanted to change that outcome for as many people as she could. She studied and researched endlessly trying to crack the codes with Ren hardly issuing any complaints. As long as he could return home at the end of his long work day to his fiery redhead and some of her delicious desserts, he was a happy man.

Now, Erra held the last picture the two of them had taken together and smiled wistfully. All of the baking she'd done to appease her husband's sweet tooth had earned him a bit of a round belly, but he was quite handsome in her opinion. He had deep brown eyes that she loved to stare at for hours. Though he had very close-cut brown hair, he had a full, well-groomed beard. Then there was that smile…that crooked, confident smile that had won her attention in the first place. It was the same smile he wore in this last photo of them together and staring it at on that day pained her heart, knowing that shortly after he was just "gone."

Ren had taken a career working for the Ministry of Welfare as the Chief Territorial Expansion Engineer. He may not have had lofty aspirations, but he loved his job. He especially loved checking out new places that hadn't been developed with the Sybil Scanners. Erra worried, but his confidence usually put her mind at ease.

One morning, he left for work and never returned. MWPSB looked for him for a month before they showed up at the doorstep six years ago and just declared him missing. They had given up and would no longer search for him. She had screamed at the bearers of her bad news, asking how that was possible. Wasn't Sybil everywhere? There were no answers. She had even attempted to request records from the company he worked for. She wanted to know where he had been and why he had been there. The results had been disheartening. The records were sealed due to the nature of the work. They asked why she would even want to know that information.

"It will just make your hue cloudy. Let it go," they advised. At one point, they said it was likely he had even left the country, but Erra knew her husband would never have done that to her. He had to be dead in order not to return to her…nothing else would have kept him away. Thus, her faith in the system was marred, only in the face of the strength of belief she held in her husband.

The investigation and everything about how it was followed was all wrong. For one thing, no one could even tell her what his last psycho-pass reading had been. With scanners everywhere, he would have at least run into one on the way to work. They wouldn't even tell her if he showed up to work that day. On a whim, she had tried to look up recent records concerning Ren using her therapist's ID. Outside of very basic data, there was no information. It was as though he had been erased. When the missing info was mentioned to the powers that be, they simply stated that that happens sometimes when someone is declared missing or deceased. The answer was unacceptable, and she knew it was bull shit.

At that point, she had considered bringing it up to those who had been in charge of the investigation, but her instinct was that it would lead to nothing. Something like this was bound to be coming down from the top offices at the PSB.

She decided that she had to know what had truly happened. She would find out for herself. With the scores she had received in high school, it was easy to be allowed to take the test again and earn herself a spot training to become a CID investigator. Kamiya was intelligent, capable, and driven. Her place in the CID was cemented within just a few months of training.

It had been a bit of a shock that the system _allowed_ her that career path. She felt sure that whatever happened to Ren would block her getting a job with the CID. Her paranoia over Sybil was making her see obstacles that were never encountered. Figuring that this was the closest she would ever come to answers and justice, she bided her time and took any opportunity for advancement that appeared before her. If she could just work herself towards the top of the PSB, maybe she could find the hidden files or ask someone in the upper levels of the ministry. It was no guarantee, but she couldn't sit idly by and do nothing. That was much too painful an option.

The memories spent the day assaulting her mercilessly. Erra thought being alone would help her make it through the day, but it turned out to be even more depressing to stay at home by herself with photos of her and Ren during their marriage on the walls. In the afternoon, she decided that she needed to be anywhere but their house. Wanting something that would still offer familiarity, she got in the car and rode the hour it took to get downtown at the CID tower. Being at work had been oddly comforting the last year or so that she'd been an inspector, so just being there helped.

She didn't want to face her co-workers that day, so taking an elevator on a completely separate side of the building, Erra made her way to the leisure floors looking for an abandoned corner and a much needed drink. Sitting in the back booth of one of the more popular bars, she slowly began downing glass after glass of bourbon, reflecting miserably on her loss.

She imagined Inspector Ginoza seeing her like this at the dig site they had been at a few days ago and laughed. It was ridiculous how inept he could be about some things. She started to miss the way he took her mind off the intense pain she suppressed daily, and she wanted her friend. She was falling apart and she needed comfort, even if it was from an awkward man such as her partner. Then she got angry at herself for thinking about the inspector and actually feeling a brief moment of reprieve.

How dare he intrude on her private thoughts today! She shouldn't have been thinking about him at all, she thought. Friend or not, Kami felt only one man deserved to be on her mind today. This was Ren's day.

Desperate to keep her mind focused on her husband, she ordered another glass of whisky and began softly singing their wedding song to herself.


	9. Chapter 9: Unexpected Tenderness

_**CHAPTER NINE: Unexpected Tenderness**_

by jolibrix and ThatGingahNinja

WARNING: *This will be a full length story that contains canon typical violence, language, mature adult themes, and sensitive topics. If those bother you please do not read this __fic.

 _ **Ginoza**_

The MWPSB offered many perks to their employees. One of them was that its main building housed many leisure and entertainment establishments exclusive to personnel; gyms, bars, restaurants, theaters, arcades, even small convenience stores. Inspectors for the CID especially liked to frequent these useful hotspots, and Ginoza thought there was a chance he might find Kamiya at one of them, despite it being her day off. It was much cheaper for members there than it was to go elsewhere. He had decided that if he did find the inspector, he would allow that to serve as reason enough to ask her to dinner or drinks.

Though he was not a big drinker himself, the careful rule-follower was well aware that the place most off-duty inspectors could be located was the bar on the fourth floor. After taking the elevator down a few floors and walking past the general bustle of MWPSB employees looking to let off some steam, Ginoza made his way into the bar.

Through the fog of stale smoke and smell of alcohol he walked, passing groups of friends enjoying an evening out or wearied loners drowning sorrow for another day. Between clipped conversations and laughter, he caught pieces of a beautiful melody floating softly to his ears. The voice had a pleasingly familiar tone and as Ginoza searched for its source, he spotted a shock of long auburn hair facing away from everyone in the back corner booth.

Ginoza felt mesmerized as he neared the sound of Erra's song and began to feel nervous about asking her for time alone with him. He had never seen her hair cascading straight down her back and marveled at just how long it really was. Even when she unbraided her locks at the end of a long work day, the red tresses weren't this length. Kamiya's hair took on a heavy crimp after being in a braid all day, every day and- Ginoza found it strange that he was suddenly thinking so much about this woman's hair.

Shaking his head as Nobuchika was almost upon her, he heard an unmistakable quiver in the gently humming voice. He paused as he realized she was crying while she sang. Feeling slight panic, he began to back away, not wanting to intrude on whatever it was that she was dealing with. Not paying attention, he ran into a bar stool and knocked it over. The whole place stopped and looked at him briefly, before he replaced it. Most eyes had returned to whatever it was they had been doing, but when Gino's eyes flicked to Kamiya, he froze. Those tear-filled teal eyes he was hoping not to see were now trained on him.

When their eyes met, his newest partner scoffed and added most unhappily, " _Of course_ it's you. Why wouldn't it be today?" Ignoring her venom, Ginoza approached cautiously, as if she were some dangerously wild animal. His head told him to get out of the situation, but his feet led him to her and those weepy eyes. He was feeling a strange and overwhelming need to be the one that stopped those tears.

"May I?" he asked, gesturing to the bench on the other side of the booth.

There was a long pause on his partner's part before she groaned and said, "I don't know, Inspector. I'm not in the mood to play," she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her oversized gray sweater. "I really don't think I can handle one of your lecture sessions on how shitty my drinking choices are for my stupid hue. Certainly not today, anyway."

Ginoza was surprised. She was normally so composed and seemed like someone so together, which he found extremely appealing, but tonight she seemed vulnerable and like she was barely hanging on. Her taunting words were there, but none of the playful sarcasm he was becoming fond of more all the time. He was worried about what might have happened to throw her off her general game. Nobuchika found that it made him exceedingly uncomfortable to witness her raw emotions, but he also found something stunning about Erra in this moment—something real and captivating. He felt almost like she was showing herself for the first time, instead of hiding behind the taunts.

As he held up two fingers to get a server's attention, he pointed to Kamiya's nearly empty drink signaling they would need a couple more of what she'd been having. He adjusted his glasses and assured her, "No lectures today. It's your day off. Surely, even I'm not _that_ offensive."

She put her face into her hands and let a few more silent tears escape, while Ginoza waited awkwardly for the drinks to arrive. It seemed she couldn't bother to contradict his statement today. He debated over not speaking again, but ultimately he found the quiet crying too unbearable not to interrupt.

As the server placed down their glasses and left, Ginoza casually said, "I wasn't aware that you had a singing voice like that." He was careful not to add the word 'beautiful' to his sentence like he wanted.

Erra looked up to meet his serious green eyes. It was impossible for him to see that her cheeks had tinged with pink since her face was terribly flushed and splotchy from crying. Seeing her so upset did something to his chest. It felt tight with anxiety while he wished for some answer on how to fix her. He wanted there to be a problem with a clear cut solution… something he could have easily mapped out in his head.

"No one was supposed to hear," she whispered. Taking her glass in her hand, she remorsefully replied, "I guess I've had too many to notice I was doing it out loud." She tried to get her taunting back, but it just came across as wounded and angry, "Wanna scold me, Ginoza?"

He suddenly felt guilty for his strict and uptight behavior around his colleagues. It wasn't a feeling he was accustomed to. "Why would you hide that talent? Afraid of being caught? It's not like you were sitting here performing with an unauthorized band. I thought you sounded—rather nice."

His words caused Kamiya to stare at him in confusion. _Had he really just offered a compliment to someone?_ Realizing he may have been too forward, he looked away. "You really weren't that loud, anyhow," Ginoza tried to assure her as he took a sip of his liquor.

Erra's wet blue-green eyes stared at him for a moment longer and then spoke in a rather snappy tone, "No one was supposed to hear because it was his and mine. That song was only for _him_." She took her drink and threw it back in entirety before putting her head down against the table.

Ginoza felt a mix of disdain and jealousy at the statement. 'Him.' Surely she wasn't the kind of woman sitting in a bar pining over some failed relationship. It was very different from how he saw the put-together inspector. He quickly reminded himself, however, that she was a real woman with a real life and not his fantasy that kept appearing in his dreams. Then there was a pang of jealousy that there must be a man she felt very passionately about, and it wouldn't be him. He silently cursed his father for putting him up to something so foolish.

"Lost love," he said with a hint of contempt. His tone caused her to shoot him a dangerous warning glare. Not known for his charming manner, he continued, "And where is this delightful lover now?" As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Ginoza suddenly realized only one outcome would have so affected the typically complete professional that he had become so infatuated over.

"He's dead," she said flatly, eyes not bothering to look in his direction. Ginoza swallowed thickly. This was definitely not the situation he had expected to find himself in this evening.

Kamiya's eyes looked heavy with drunken exhaustion and sorrow as she added, "Today is—" her long pause set Gino on edge, "it's the anniversary of when my husband went missing. Six years now. I know they've killed him. I know Ren's dead." Her head fell back to rest on the table and barely audible sobs were muffled by its surface.

Ginoza's thoughts were racing, spiraling around in his mind like a storm. _Husband?_ Did she even know what she was saying? Surely this wasn't something she had mentioned that he had simply misheard, not when he unintentionally hung from her every word. How could he not have known she had been married? He realized now why she so fixated over the ring on her index finger. It had simply been moved from its original place.

It would have made him a better man and detective if 'killed' had been the word that most upset him, but that word had most definitely been 'husband.' He felt that any chance of pursuing her would be useless and somehow immoral, if her heart still belonged to a lover torn too soon from her side.

As he switched gears and took in exactly what she had said, he found it more attractive that she had been through such a trauma and still maintained such a clear hue. That was an impressive feat, to say the least. " _What the hell is wrong with you, asshole?"_ he thought hatefully to himself. He may well have found it remarkable and sexy, but now was not the time to focus on that.

He listened to her mumbling over her husband's death and the hatred for the people that murdered him and suddenly realized she was in danger. She was vulnerable. She was intoxicated. She was in mourning. If she kept at this, her hue would surely be flagged. Nobuchika could not allow that to happen again. He would not lose another partner.

He moved into the seat next to Erra and placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him pitifully. Leaning down so no one could hear, Ginoza whispered against her ear, "Please let me take you home, before this goes too far and Sybil flags you. You don't want to get picked up over this, do you?"

The inspector shook her head while looking around nervously. She ran her hands over her eyes to clear the tears and quietly commanded herself, "Focus." Ginoza slid out of the seat and held his hand down to the wrecked widow. She used it to steady herself as she pulled across the bench to stand beside the booth.

Ginoza noticed that Inspector Kamiya was shorter than usual. Normally, she wore low black heels with her dress suits, but today she had on little gray flats. As she began walking for the door, barely maintaining a steady stance, Gino told the server to add all the drinks to his tab and followed after her. Walking behind, his eyes flicked to her bare shoulder as her sweater drooped off to its side and the tight, teal skinny pants she was wearing. He scolded himself again. He found his attraction to Kamiya was becoming more and more inconvenient by the minute.

Erra exited the bar and turned to the left. He shook his head in amusement, placing one hand on the small of her back and the other on a shoulder as he turned her to head towards the elevators in the opposite direction. He felt light tingling run through him at the intimate positioning of his hands as they gently guided the broken woman to safety.

Entering the elevator, Kamiya grabbed the support bar while Ginoza pushed the buttons for the underground parking lot. As the elevator lurched into its decent, it threw Erra off balance and she teetered into Nobuchika. She apologized and pushed off of him, missing the support bar and leaning right back into him again.

"It's alright, Kamiya," he said as he steadied her against his side and tried not to laugh. His amusement was quickly replaced with nervous energy as Erra leaned her ginger head against his chest. The red tresses were a stark contrast against his jet black suit. His abdomen tightened and he tried to suppress feeling aroused by the vanilla scent of her hair. She was breathing slowly and deeply, as if she might actually be asleep where she stood. Gino forced himself to stare straight ahead instead of at the generous view of cleavage that his height provided. She lurched forward a little as the elevator came to its stop.

Steadying her again, he said, "I'll have to drive you, Inspector. You're certainly in no shape to operate a vehicle." She looked annoyed but didn't argue. He wasn't sure if it was because she was drunk or because too much had been taken out of her by this day, but the stern inspector was glad to avoid being berated by Kami's generally snarky demeanor.

Arriving at his car, he shielded her head as he helped her settle into the passenger seat. Once he was inside the car himself, he marveled at how quiet she was being— both of them for that matter. The pair could barely accomplish anything without hurling sardonic insult at one another. Because neither had the heart to muster such words this evening, they stayed nearly silent as he exited the garage.

"Where is your apartment?" he asked. The answer she gave surprised him. "You commute an hour every day? That's ludicrous. You know an apartment near HQ would be a great deal more efficient, right?"

She turned her head to stare out the window. Erra really wasn't in the mood to deal with his patronizing. "It's fine," she answered. "I don't expect you to drive me all the way out there. That's too much of a burden this late at night, Inspector." She sighed and requested, "Just take me to a nearby hotel. I'll be fine until morning."

Ginoza said nothing but he didn't believe her. She was definitely not fine. A public place like a hotel would have Sybil scanners all over it. There wasn't a chance he would deposit her alone somewhere in this state. He absolutely would not allow yet another partner to be taken out by the system.

The car stopped only a few minutes later and Kamiya looked confused. "This isn't a hotel," she noted.

Walking around and helping her exit the car, Ginoza replied, "No, it's my apartment building."

Her eyebrows raised and she stared at him with genuine surprise. Though Erra was inebriated, she recognized at once the compassion he was trying to offer her. Still, she couldn't help diffuse how awkward his kindness felt. "Your apartment—? Nobuchika! I didn't think you had it in you to take advantage of a co-worker! You're turning into a regular Masaoka," she taunted.

"Tch," he scolded as he frowned at Erra. He was thankful she was too tipsy and it was too dark to notice his blush. "Don't get cocky at a time like this, Kamiya."

After making their way to his apartment, he told Erra that he would be happy to sleep on the couch and she could have his bed for the night. The pair argued over this, but in the end it was Ginoza who refused to back down.

He walked to the bathroom to set out towels and other conveniences in case she wanted a shower in the morning or before he woke. As he walked back into the bedroom, he heard Sybil's standardized personal A.I. Candy finishing a familiar phrase and blushed furiously as he stumbled upon Kamiya in only a beige colored bra and lacy tan underwear.

He turned rapidly as he choked out, "Why would you turn off the holo-wear before I was out of the room?"

She laughed softly and he heard the blankets being pulled back on his bed. "One, you _were_ out of the room and two, what's the big deal? This is how I sleep. Actually, I don't like a top on at all." He still faced away from her and she laughed again, "The bra shows less than my swimwear! They're only breasts, Ginoza. Don't be such a prude all the time," Kami teased.

He turned around to argue and actually felt slightly disappointed that her bottom half was now beneath covers in the bed. "I'm not a prude. I'm trying to show you some respect," he countered as he desperately tried to keep his eyes to hers.

She lifted her eyebrow and taunted again saying, "Oh ho. Not a prude, hm? Then I suppose you're perfectly comfortable unclasping my bra for me? It gets more difficult when I've been drinking." She stood from the bed, back to Ginoza, but head turned, daring him with her smirk. He clenched his jaw and felt like he was suffocating at the sight of flesh colored lace barely covering the perfect ass he'd been staring after all this time. The length of her unusual strawberry hair stretched straight down to the dimple at the small of her back and only fixed Ginoza's eyes further on Erra's rear. The fact that it was better than he had imagined seemed absurdly unfair.

Directly behind her now, his hands reached for Kamiya, but it was her shoulders where they came to rest. He turned her around and looked sternly into her drunken teal eyes. "No," he admitted. "I'm not comfortable with it—not today, Kamiya." The playfulness on her lips disappeared as she understood his meaning.

This day was about her lost husband. There was no way Ginoza would do anything to jeopardize their partnership when she was in such a susceptible state. He knew she had faced great trauma. He knew her heart was broken. He knew she was barely holding herself together, and he would be appalled with himself if he tried to turn the focus of her excruciating day to him instead of to her husband where it belonged. "You need rest. Let me help you get to sleep, Kamiya. I can do that much, at least."

"Gino," she replied softly, her face clearly showing how unexpected she found his attempt at consoling her.

A great sob escaped her throat as she shouted at him, "They killed him! He's dead! I know he's dead!" and Kamiya's wailing overcame her as her body collapsed towards the floor. Nobuchika clutched her slipping form against him and sank to the ground carefully, keeping her from hurting herself. "Let go of me!" she shouted as she pushed forcefully away from her partner. Her face melted from rage into pure devastation, and instead she grabbed the lapels of Gino's suit jacket and pulled herself into a ball next to him, sobbing heavily against his white dress shirt.

For a moment, Ginoza wasn't sure what to do for her and held his hands up and away. Slowly, as her sobs ripped at his heart, he slipped his arms around her bare back and clutched her tightly. He swept her long auburn locks over her shoulder and let his hands rest against the soft skin. As Kamiya cried, Gino put his chin against her hair and held her to him safely, completely encompassing her with his safe embrace. She sobbed for quite some time and Ginoza sat firm, determined to let her anchor to him as long as she required. If this would clear Kami's hue, keeping her from ending up a latent criminal, he would be more than willing to do this one small thing.

Finally, her sobbing ceased and she felt heavy in his arms. Assuming Erra had finally fallen asleep, Ginoza held her tighter still as he stood to lift her into his bed. Sliding her under his thick blankets and pulling them around her, Nobuchika turned to leave, but felt a tug on his sleeve. When he looked down at Kamiya, her eyes were closed. She wouldn't look at him, but she didn't release him either. Exhausted from the unexpected turn of events, dying to go to sleep, Ginoza crouched to the bedside and waited. He waited another half hour, at least, with her fingers gripping onto him for comfort until they relaxed and he stood once more.

His knees throbbed. His back was sore. His whole being was drained. As he looked down at Kamiya's finally peaceful face, he felt a flicker of light that it had been worth it; that she would wake her normal self and that he would finally have helped to comfort one of his aching and tortured partners. He tossed his suit jacket, tie, and dress shirt over the back of a chair. He untucked his undershirt and made his way to the living room. The throbbing in Ginoza's bones all but disappeared as he collapsed onto his sofa and passed out, his accomplishment tugging gently at his lips.

 _ **Erra**_

Waking the next morning, Erra found herself only slightly disoriented before knowing exactly where it was she lay. Standing to locate her unexpected guardian, she poked her head out of the bedroom and saw her partner's long form asleep on the couch. A gorgeous Siberian husky was curled below him on the floor. Kamiya bent to scratch the dog's ears and whispered, "You must be Dime." It was one of the very few personal things Gino had ever discussed with his newest detective. For some reason, it made her laugh to know that one of his hobbies included dog training. It also made her feel an unexpected warmth towards her partner.

Looking up at Inspector Ginoza's face, she was amused to see he had fallen asleep with his glasses still on. Gently, she removed them and placed them silently on his coffee table. She suddenly felt a surge of compassion for this straight-laced, crabby man asleep in front of her and smiled. What he had given of himself the previous night was something she had never expected from him, and she began feeling something stronger than co-workers should feel.

It had become so unusual for her to feel her real emotions that she quickly shifted gears to the superficial, noting how strikingly handsome his features really were. His jawline, his full lower lip, his slender nose, and stunningly almond shaped eyes…Erra noted that his lashes were so black and so long, it almost looked as if he were wearing eyeliner. The strict Inspector Ginoza looked almost like a kind little boy as he slept. She tenderly brushed black hair from his eyes and placed a chaste kiss to his forehead, while whispering, "So much for the big bad detective."

Erra stood to head to the shower and felt certain that a pair of eyes followed her body as she left the room, but when she looked back to the man, he seemed exactly the same as a moment before.

After showering and having the Candy A.I. system at Gino's dress her for work, Kamiya braided her long red hair out of the way and began preparing a breakfast as a thank you. When Ginoza emerged from his shower, he looked genuinely surprised to find that she had actually cooked instead of using the food machines. "You didn't have to do this," he said flatly.

She faltered a moment before answering. The familiar, sexy scent of his aftershave, fresh on his skin, was stronger than at work and overwhelmingly distracting. "Of course, I didn't," Erra responded as she gave him a gentle smile. "That's what makes it special. Now, if you don't eat it, I'll assume that means you won't forgive me for my appalling behavior last night, which will make work fairly uncomfortable. I'll be forced to embarrass you until you accept my apologies."

Gino gave Kamiya a reprimanding look and she noticed how beautiful his eyes were…and somehow familiar. As he picked his glasses up from the coffee table and positioned them on his face, he replied, "Just watch yourself from now on, ok? I don't feel like cleaning up after yet another partner. It seemed you were the one in an embarrassing situation, anyhow."

Erra scoffed and smirked at his returning rotten attitude. "That is certainly true, but I don't fluster as easily as you, _Nobuchika_ ," she said casually, grinning like a Cheshire cat when he flinched and looked away at her use of his first name. As she set a plate in front of him, she halved the omelet on her own plate and scraped it in front of Dime on the floor.

"Leave it," Ginoza commanded his dog. Dime dutifully obeyed and moved to sit beside his master's chair.

Giving him an annoyed once over, she scolded, "Come on, Gino! It's half an egg."

"I would appreciate it if you would not spoil my dog, Inspector Kamiya," he replied curtly.

"Surely you can call me Erra after last night," she responded. Knowing it would ruffle his feathers, the childish redhead added, "I mean, you _were_ holding my mostly naked body in your _bedroom_."

Blushing furiously, Ginoza adjusted his glasses and turned his head. "Absolutely not! First names would be much too unprofessional!"

"Kami, then?" she asked as he spared her another glance. "Or I might have to let it slip that you took me home with you while I was quite under the influence," Erra taunted.

Exasperated, Nobuchika huffed and said, "We'll see. I'll give it a try. It still seems awfully informal."

"Go on, then," Kamiya prompted as her teal eyes shone with mischief. "Try it now."

Blushing again and looking miserably uncomfortable, Ginoza said, "Please don't give my dog breakfast scraps in the future— Kami."

Now it was Erra's turn to blush. She was sure it wasn't intentional but his 'in the future' comment implied that he had anticipated her joining him in his apartment for breakfast again. She looked away, too flushed to meet his eyes and teased, "Aye-aye, chief!" but shot him a side eye as she muttered, "even if it was only half an egg."

Nobuchika raised his eyebrow at her and pursed his lips. Keeping his stellar eyes fixed on hers, he silently gave Dime the release command, allowing his husky to eagerly gulp down the rare scrap. Kami smiled happily at the pleased pup, and her grin increased as she caught the smile tugging on Gino's lips while he watched his dog enjoying a treat. Watching the joy he took in his pet did something to utterly melt her. Again, it surprised her to be feeling any type of real positive emotion.

Kamiya wasn't sure how she had spent the previous day mourning her husband and today found her heart fluttering for the first time in years. As the two headed into the HQ and Gino said to her, without a trace of scorn, "Please, let me know if you feel overwhelmed today, Insp— Kami," Erra felt she might not make it through her work day keeping her controlled emotions intact.

Kamiya felt very off her usual game and spent most of the morning hoping no one had noticed. There had been more than generous opportunity for her to take the endless lead-ins to teasing that Ginoza's asinine comments always left her, but she found herself choking every time. The ginger woman even tried flirting more with Kou and Pops, hoping it would help. Instead she would get distracted over how Gino's mannerisms actually made her feel, and it became a little overwhelming. She considered saying something to her partner about feeling ill, sure he would allow her to leave early knowing what she'd been through the previous day.

Erra fiddled with her wedding band more than usual and wondered what Ren would think of her if he saw how she'd become. Would he scold her for feeling real attraction for another man, or would it be because she had taken so long? She could almost hear him laughing that anything as simple as this could make _his wife_ so bashful…not his temperamental redhead.

Erra decided to take the chance. It wasn't as if she was committing to anything. She watched as Masaoka said something quietly to the Inspector. Ginoza rolled his eyes and frowned. Kami found the sight of him pouting marvelous. As the old enforcer excused himself, she twisted her ring again with her thumb and stepped over to her partner.

"Inspector," she began, but was cut of immediately.

"Would you consider getting a drink after work sometime?" Ginoza had asked as if it was all one word. Kamiya's eyes grew in surprise, and he slowed down to add, "With me? I meant." She couldn't find her voice for a moment. "Friends do that right? When you're feeling up to it, of course…Kami."

Everything in Erra's head told her to say something smart as usual. His awkward stumbling around the question gave her ample ammunition.

"I think I'd really enjoy that, Detective," she smiled.

 _ **Mina**_

Three days later, Mina was spending the morning feeling more insecure than normal. She watched as Yayoi had her "who cares" attitude, and was slightly jealous of the way that Inspector Kamiya was confident enough in herself to flirt openly with whoever felt like it. She also found that she was a little envious of the other women's clothes. Maybe it was because she had spent her previous day off in her usual ensemble and had received many strange looks from passerby. It wasn't that the clothes were necessarily her style…she had grabbed the greatly oversized plaid shirt and ratty pants from the lost and found bucket at the rehab.

She had never really cared about the clothes she wore and it wasn't something Mina ever thought about until she found herself surrounded by the professionals everywhere in this city. Her clothing made her feel severely out of place. She considered lighting everything on fire, forcing the need for something different, but she found herself alone in the break room, as Inspector Kamiya walked in. For once, when the therapist-by-nature approached her leaving the food line, she actually openly responded, without being obstinate.

"I do have some questions for you today, Inspector," replied Mina to the redhead's usual question.

The tall woman took a moment to hide her surprise before walking to get to the end of the serving queue. "That's wonderful, Nakamura! Can I call you Mina?"

"Please do," was the reply.

"Let me grab my lunch and I'll join you," said the inspector, seeming fairly excited to finally sit down with her unusual enforcer.

Mina found and empty table and sat down, eyeing her food with distrust. That was one thing she really missed about home…the food. Some research had led her to finding out that majority of the food was made from hyper oats. They may have called it food, but in her eyes, it might as well have been cardboard. Even her brother's shoddy cooking was better than this. A mental list of things she needed to ask about had been getting longer and longer since her arrival. This time she added 'procuring real food' to it.

Just when she worked up the nerve to place one tasteless bite in her mouth, the seat in front of her screeched and Inspector Kamiya sat down heavily. Erra gave a genuine smile while asking, "So, how do you feel like your adjusting has been?" With the question Kamiya took a huge bite of whatever her cardboard concoction was pretending to be. The woman didn't even grimace, and Nakamura felt like giving her a medal.

"I don't know," she responded gloomily. "Horribly" was the honest response, but if she made it seem like she was too much of an outcast, there was always the possibility of being sent back to rehab.

"You don't know…or you're afraid to say?" The inspector was getting right to the point.

"The latter, I suppose," Mina answered truthfully. She wasn't sure why, but the woman in front of her was giving off such a friendly aura and Nakamura began opening up. "I don't think I belong here, Inspector, but I'm terrified of spending the rest of my life in the facility."

"Wow," said her boss. Mina watched as the redhead raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "You jumped right to the worst possible outcome, huh?" Nakamura frowned. "Let's just start with the questions you wanted to ask me earlier. I'll save 'destroying your life' for the next session. Deal?"

The teasing grin on her face was too much. Mina realized that she had come off a little intense for a casual conversation, and she laughed heartily at Kamiya's joke. "Deal. Sorry. I guess I came on kind of extreme."

"Well, let's start again, shall we?" she requested. She stuck her hand across the table and the little brunette grabbed it, both smiling as they shook. "My name is Erra Kamiya, and I don't have any friends at work. I was hoping you might be interested. There. Now we're even. How was that for extreme?"

Nakamura's mouth fell open slightly. It was hard to believe that could be an honest confession, but she saw on the ginger's face that it was true. Suddenly, she felt a much closer connection to the inspector, realizing maybe she wasn't the only misfit on the team. After that, talking to the woman came quite naturally. 

_**Erra  
**_  
Erra found herself conversing with Mina easily, and soon they veered away from less professional things with the ease of good friends. While Ginoza had warned her not to get too close, she saw the pros and cons of both. Kamiya knew that for her partner and most other people in this society, empathizing was a dangerous emotion that _did_ pose real risk to a cloudy psycho-pass, but it had never been an issue for her. It came naturally and was a big part of the reason she was able to control her own hue so well. So the cons for her were that getting close meant risking having to shoot a friend, but since she had already shot Mina, it seemed like something a friendship could handle. She said as much and the two of them shared a laugh over the instance. Staying away meant losing out on friendship but more importantly, it made things tense and their division less cohesive than it could be at its best.

Ultimately, having a friend at work seemed very appealing. Since her husband's disappearance, Kamiya had found it hard to keep friends. Part of it was her obsession with becoming an inspector and part was that she found it difficult to relate to the average population who never questioned Sybil.

She shared the same sense of humor as Nakamura. They moved from talking about clothes with Mina begging her to help find better outfits, which Erra found amusing, to joking about people's personality quirks in the office.

"I absolutely loathe how he taps that pencil on his desk. I just want to grab it out of his hand and break it…but not just break it…break it, light it on fire, and flush the ashes down the toilet," Erra said, referring to Kougami's habit of tapping out drum beats on his desk.

"I would pay to see that." Mina let out a small chuckle. "I can't stand the way that Inspector Ginoza keeps on tidying his already tidy work space. It kills me. I have the urge to go over there and actually make a mess, just to see what would happen. I'm pretty sure he would spit bats over it."

"Yeah, he would flip his lid for sure," the redhead agreed. She had noted that Mina had a strange turn of phrase every so often. It was something she meant to ask about, but intuitively knew that it would put the woman on guard. It could wait until later.

"Speaking of the men that work in this place…" began Mina while raising an eyebrow.

"Please tell me you're saying I'm not the only one who has noticed the high concentration of attractive men in this place?" Erra said conspiratorially. Mina was opening up to her, and it was nice. She couldn't remember the last time she talked like this with a friend.

"You most definitely are not!" Mina responded. The brunette was shaking her head. "I mean, at first I thought it was just our division, but it isn't. Have you seen the head nurse?"

"It is out of control, and yeah, I've noticed Nurse Seki. The guy tells some really dark jokes though, and it's kind of off-putting." The head nurse was very striking in appearance, and he seemed like a very nice guy, but he wasn't the man she'd been thinking of virtually non-stop for the last three days.

"He just has gallows humor. It isn't too bad. I think he's sweet." Mina was blushing.

"I have to admit, though, that our division seems to be just..." Erra couldn't find words to describe it. To her, all of them were gorgeous. "Even Pops is kinda hot, which is ridiculous because he's so much older than me. Something about his mannerisms…and his flirting game is just completely…"

"Hell, I know! I don't care if he is older than me, I would consider it." She paused and seemed to consider her next words. "You and Yayoi are really hot too. I can't walk down the hall without hearing about your ass, specifically. You'd be surprised how often it comes up."

Erra blushed. She wasn't surprised actually, but she was embarrassed that people talked so openly about her appearance that it was a topic throughout the building. Sensing she was uncomfortable, Mina moved to another question.

"Speaking of a strong flirting game—I have a question that might be a little out of line, but I just _have_ to know."

Feeling a little nervous over her enforcer's phrasing, she replied, "Go for it."

"I've noticed that you have no problem talking to men, and you seem to be really good at flirting. I feel like I'm terrible at it. I noticed the last few days you and Kougami have been paying a lot of attention to each other. Do—do you and Kougami have a thing going on now?"

Mina looked really awkward and played with her unfinished food, and Erra wanted to laugh. Nakamura continued, "I mean, I know you guys are supposed to keep your distance and stuff, but I was curious because you guys seem to talk a lot, and he certainly doesn't mind the attention. Hell, what man would?"

Mina seemed to be fishing for information, and Erra knew why. Besides Kami being naturally intuitive, Masaoka had seen Kou pull his fellow enforcer into his dorm by her hips. Knowing that the girl had been sleeping with Shinya caused Kami to feel guilty for using flirting shamelessly with him to avoid budding feelings towards her partner. It was obvious that she had unintentionally been making Mina feel insecure.

"No. Absolutely not!" Erra was relieved to see the brunette relax and accept her answer. "I mean, certainly I enjoy flirting with Enforcer Kougami, because he knows how to take a joke without coming back creepy, like other men, but I'll definitely cut back if it makes you uncomf—" the glare she was suddenly getting prevented Erra from finishing the statement. Now the redhead found she was the one feeling insecure. "It isn't that he isn't attractive, but it seems I…I have a soft spot for another man."

"It's Inspector Ginoza, isn't it?" Nakamura was leaning over, eager for the answer.

Kamiya felt heat in her cheeks. "Is it terribly obvious?" The inspector was feeling very self-conscious and foolish.

The little enforcer laughed at her awkwardness. "No, I don't think so," she assured. "It's just that I kind of hoped that was your answer. I've kind of been shipping it in my head."

"Shipping?"

"Yeah," she chuckled again. "Like, I think the two of you should be in a relation _ship_ and totally support the idea that if anyone is going to loosen that guy up, it's got to be you. Please tell me you two are sleeping together."

"What? No! Mina!" Erra felt incredibly flustered. She began speaking much too quickly, giving too many details. "I only said I have a soft spot for him! Nothing's happened! He's just a good man. Not that he isn't utter perfection in a suit…I mean, even you think he's sexy. You _just_ said… And he—he's very kind."

Now the enforcer was really laughing. "You've got it bad if you consider Inspector Ginoza to be 'kind.'" The woman was having trouble breathing she was laughing so hard.

Erra felt a surge of protective feelings for her partner. "Please don't laugh at that. You don't know how he is in private!"

"I hear _nobody_ does. It's exactly the reason I think you need to be the one to find out. The man can hardly contain himself when you're in a room. You should see how he watches you, Kamiya. It's—" but she wasn't given the chance to finish.

"That's enough, thank you. I—I'm married. I mean…it's complicated, Mina." The enforcer looked slightly horrified as the inspector began to cry. It wasn't how she wanted to share the information with her new friend, but Kamiya decided now was as good a time as any. The brunette listened intently and comforted Erra in all the right ways, apologizing profusely for not knowing. After a long while, the inspector watched as Mina headed back to the makeshift bone lab. Erra felt overwhelmed at having recounted so much of her past but also relieved to find someone to share with. She had needed the comforting words now more than ever.

For only the second time since losing Ren, she felt that she had somehow just managed to make a real and true new friend


End file.
